An EIB History Lesson on 1994

RUSH: Here is Tom in Manhattan, Kansas. Thank you for waiting, sir, and hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. It’s an honor to talk to you, sir.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Yeah, before I get to my question I just want to say I find it hilarious that liberals have no problem linking the word ‘war’ to the economy, but have major issues linking the war to terrorism.

RUSH: Oh, exactly. We shouldn’t have a war on terror. We shouldn’t have war on terrorism. Exactly right.

CALLER: Yes. But, anyway, Rush, I grew up in the nineties and my parents were singing your praises all — because of your effect on the ’94 elections, and I was, you know, kind of praying that I hope we see something similar in 2010. I was only seven when Clinton, you know, his administration began. So I was just wondering if you could maybe talk about some of the similarities and differences you’ve been seeing between the beginning of the Clinton administration and now.

RUSH: Oh, hell, yes. Damn right. It’s an excellent question. That is a hell of a good question! I applaud you. You’re 23 years old, right?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Oh, this is a great question. I can tell you right now what the big difference is. Starting in 1988 when I started this program through 1989, there were two huge scandals in the House of Representatives. The big one was the House Bank Scandal. Do you remember that by any chance or did your parents tell you about it?

CALLER: I heard about it but I don’t really know the story.

RUSH: Here’s basically what it was. The House of Representatives at the time had its own bank for members, and their paychecks were automatically deposited there. But it really didn’t matter what they were paid. They were allowed to write checks for money they didn’t have. Some of these people were overdrawn hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, with no attempt ever to recoup it. If they needed to spend $50,000 on something, they just wrote a check. The House Bank covered it. This blew up, because everybody could understand this. Nobody else can go to their bank and write a check for money that they don’t have. The second scandal that was discovered shortly thereafter was the House Post Office Scandal.

That is where members would take a check from a constituent, a campaign contribution check or whatever, and go into the post office and buy a dollar’s worth of stamps and get $50,000 in change. I mean, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the House Post Office and the House Bank were personal piggy banks. That blew up. Then while all this was going on, there was an agitator in the House of Representatives who was trying everything he could to take out the leadership — Jim Wright, Thomas Foley, you name it. His name was ‘Newt’ Gingrich. Newt Gingrich was leading the Reagan revolution in the House of Representatives. He was contrasting, starkly so, the views of Reagan conservatism with the liberalism of then, which is identical to the liberalism of today.

The liberalism of today is no different than the liberalism Newt was fighting then. It’s identical: abuse of power; wanton spending; doing everything they could to tax the rich, and limit individual liberty and opportunity. And Newt was having none of it. Because of the scandals and because of the emergence of this show that provided a national media platform to focus attention on the Democrats and their scandals and their corruption — combined with what Newt was doing, after years and years of doing this — finally the American people were fed up with 40 years of one-party rule in the House and decided that they would want change. They wanted some change, and Newt and the boys (with the help of a couple consultants) came up with a Contract with America that had ten understandable items in it.

‘Here’s what we’re going to do when we get into power,’ such things as term limits, balance the budget and so forth — and the third thing they did they went to all of these House of Representative districts that Democrats had all over the country and they nationalized those elections. Rather than made the elections about who brought home the most pork or who built the newest old folks’ home, they instead talked about the danger this Democrat had been to American foreign policy with the Soviet menace racing and so forth in Central America — and that combination of things won. But it was primarily that there was an army of conservative Republicans in the House hell-bent on throwing the Democrats out. That’s what does not exist today, and the leader of that revolution somehow doesn’t see liberalism today as he saw it then.