Focus on Voters, Not the Media

RUSH: We’ll go to Columbus, Ohio, and say hi to Matt. Matt, you’re the first call. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Hi. Thanks. I got a question about the budget and the Republicans’ alternative budget.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: The media, I just want to find out what the differences are, as far as how much less money we’re going to spend. It seemed like the media just isn’t covering it. I’ve heard that it’s laughable, but they don’t seem to want to tell you the details and let you decide for yourself, and I was wondering why is that?

RUSH: Well, probably because it’s never going to happen. That’s one reason they’re not reporting it. The other reason, they don’t believe in it, the media doesn’t care what the Republicans are doing, proposing.

CALLER: So they’re judge, jury, and executioner basically for all alternative ideas?

RUSH: At this stage they’ve become activists, they’re not —

CALLER: So we’re going to have to come up with something new again like a Contract with America, something that’s bigger that they just can’t ignore, that hits them in the face and —

RUSH: No, no. Look, I’m going to tell you what’s in the Republican budget here, but you have to learn something.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: I have begged and asked people to do this for the course of many years of my sterling broadcast career. Please, ladies and gentlemen, do not ever seek validation for your own views; do not define success in advancing our cause by whether or not we are discussed accurately in the Drive-By Media. There are certain realities that one has to face, and there are certain realities in life that you cannot change. And when you can’t change something, it’s ridiculous to be obsessed with it. It is a total waste of time to be obsessed with the media and what they say about Republicans. You can sit there and say, ‘But, Rush, but, Rush, they’re poisoning the minds.’ Yeah, but George W. Bush still won two terms, Ronald Reagan won two terms. The right candidate could win. The right message can win. The Drive-Bys don’t win all the time. If you believe that the ultimate success of what you believe in resides in seeing it promoted and respected on the NBC Nightly News every night, you are going to be disappointed and sad for the rest of your life. That isn’t going to change, nothing you can do to change it. Focus on voters, not the media.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The question was, ‘What’s in the Republican alternative budget proposal?’ A couple sound bites here to explain it. Paul Ryan this morning in Washington, congressman from Wisconsin held a press conference to introduce the Republican budget. We have a couple sound bites. Here’s number one.

RYAN: Our budget avoids the huge tax increase scheduled at the end of 2010 by making the 2001 and 2003 tax relief permanent. Second, it permanently extends the alternative minimum patch tax. Next, our budget reforms the broken tax code by making it simpler, more pro-growth and more competitive. For individuals we offer taxpayers a choice. You can have the current code with all its bells and loopholes and deductions if you want to, or you can switch over to a choice-based system, a simple system, a system with two rates, 10% on the first hundred thousand dollars for couples, or 50,000 for individuals, 25% above that.

RUSH: And here’s the second part of his presentation.

RYAN: To get this economy growing we’ve proposed a number of reforms. Number one, cut the corporate tax rate. Currently it’s the second highest in the industrialized world, to the average industrialized nation rate, 25%. We also propose to suspend the capital gains tax through the year 2010. We need to spur investment, not punish it.

RUSH: That’s Paul Ryan, congressman, Wisconsin, with the alternative Republican budget, and the ideas are great. Don’t misunderstand here my flippancy about this to the caller. The ideas are fabulous. In fact, many of them were in my bipartisan stimulus plan op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal way back many months ago when Obama was asking and saying he would listen to ideas that maybe were not his if they made sense. So I wrote — after he told Republicans not to listen to me — I submitted my bipartisan stimulus plan, and two of the key ingredients were cutting the corporate income tax rate and suspending the capital gains rate for a year or longer. This is what the Republicans have proposed, and it makes sense that they would propose this. After all, I have been named by Democrat leaders as the leader of the Republican Party.