RUSH: Michele Bachmann, as I mentioned yesterday, this giant house call, this rally planned for Thursday on the steps of the Capitol, I’m hearing that it is growing by leaps and bounds. People from all over the country are trying to get there. Dr. Mark Levin will be participating along with Michele Bachmann, congressman from Minnesota, as well as Jon Voight. Now, Michelle was on Fox News Channel, Fox & Friends this morning. Gretchen Carlson said, ‘I know that you and some other Republicans are having a town hall, a get-together, asking people across America to join you. Join you in what?’
BACHMANN: To come and let the members of Congress know that all of the messages that came out in August at the town halls and tea parties are still relevant. People don’t want to have government take over their health care. They kind of forgot that message. This is it. This is the Super Bowl of freedom this week because this will change our country forever, dramatic tax increases that will cost senior citizens $500 billion in health care and truly, Gretchen, the only way they’re going to listen is if real freedom-loving Americans come here to Washington, noon on Thursday, look at the whites of their eyes of their members of Congress and say, ‘Don’t you remember, I told you don’t take away my health care.’
RUSH: In an e-mail to me, Michele Bachmann earlier this week said that e-mails and phone calls have lost their impact, with the Democrats anyway, because they’re going to do this regardless. It’s her belief that lots of human beings, lots of Americans prowling around office buildings in Washington, congressional office buildings trying to find members of Congress and look ’em right in the eye and say, ‘Nope, nope, nope, we do not want this.’ Now, here’s the dirty little secret. The Republicans in Congress can’t alone stop this and Michele Bachmann’s asking for help, and people ask me all the time, ‘What can I do?’ Here’s an event. Now, the big tea party thing they had in August on a Saturday, they had months to plan for that. I just heard about this yesterday. This is Tuesday, right? I just heard about this yesterday. So they’re trying to pull off an amazing feat here in a few days. Gretchen Carlson then said, ‘These people might have some kind of impact on conservative Democrats, right?’
BACHMANN: That’s the point, because they are squarely sitting on the fence right now, Gretchen. If they see their constituents coming to Washington, DC, that will make the difference, it made a huge difference as you know in August. Had we had the vote in August, no question it would have failed. But again, Speaker Pelosi has been able to bring the hammer down on these Blue Dogs for the last two months, and we need to remind these members again of the lesson of August and the tea parties.
CARLSON: Okay.
BACHMANN: People don’t want this to pass.
RUSH: The Blue Dogs continue to be an interesting thing. I want to go back to that front page Washington Post story where the Obama White House threw Creigh Deeds overboard because he was losing. When Creigh Deeds was no longer worth anything to Obama, it was worth throwing him overboard and humiliating him publicly, front page Washington Post, all to protect Obama’s reputation and image. Now, you Blue Dogs have got a real decision to make on this because I’m going to tell you the dirty little secret. Nancy Pelosi would love for you to vote for this thing and go home and lose. She doesn’t like Democrats in her caucus who are not as leftist and radical as she is. She thinks that she can hold onto power — they get this health care thing, and then next comes cap and trade — she thinks that if she can lose some of you Blue Dogs and still hold onto power, still have enough Democrats to give her a majority. And I mean this. I’m not trying to use anything but genuine sincerity in speaking to you Blue Dogs.
You’ve got a decision to make. You listen to your constituents and vote ‘no’ on this thing and you go home and you run for reelection and you could proudly stand and say, ‘Yeah, I’m a fiscal conservative. I’m not for irresponsible spending, government growth, and I voted against it,’ and you’ll be reelected. And you get back there and Pelosi’s, you know, treated you like dirt. On the other hand, you can vote for it, and then you can go home and you can make whatever lame excuse you want for your constituents as to why you voted for it, and then you lose, and Nancy Pelosi wins twice. She gets rid of you, and she gets her health care bill passed. I don’t want any of you Blue Dogs to underestimate what I’m saying here. She doesn’t like you being in the caucus. You are not pure enough. So that’s where we are. And Michele Bachmann is of the opinion that boots on the ground, so to speak, are what it’s going to take to make an impact on the vote because I think the vote is scheduled for Friday.
Kristin in Worthington, Ohio. We go to you first on the phones today. Great to have you with us.
CALLER: Well, hello, Rush. It’s such an honor to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I’ve never done anything politically before in my life other than vote and listen to you and make myself educated and watch Fox News. I heard Michele Bachmann on Friday, and I thought, ‘Boy, that’s a great idea. I hope she can get it pulled together and have a few people there.’ I mean, it’s less than a week away. By Sunday on the As a Mom website that I follow, they were encouraging all of us moms, if we could, to get to Washington, DC, and they were providing us with a template for a T-shirt we should make so we can all find each other when we get there. They also provided a link to a local grassroots organization that was organizing transportation for this event. So Sunday while my family and I were eating dinner I mentioned it and my husband said, ‘Well, you should go.’ And I said, ‘I’d love to go but, you know, I’m thinking the mom thing. I’ve got a family to take care of, meals to fix, kids to get to school and all of that.’ And the three of them almost in unison said, ‘We can take care of ourselves, Mom. You need to go.’ So I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s very much out of character for me. But I have my confirmation and —
RUSH: Well, you know what? You’re going to be joining a whole lot of people just like you. People on our side have not used the public protest as a rule. We’re too busy working and so forth. We’re not malcontents, generally. But people like you understand that the Republican Party simply doesn’t have the votes. They simply don’t have the strength to stop this in either the House or the Senate. And all these tea parties and all these town hall meetings at congressional offices, these were spontaneous. There were so many people that were there for the first time in their lives at something like this. It’s fabulous. Go ahead and do that T-shirt thing, Kristin, but you will not need it to recognize your compatriots because you’ll be able to recognize them very simply, they’ll be smiling. The liberals are constantly enraged, constantly angry, just keep a sharp eye out for the union thugs that will show up and try to cause some problems. Just find the people smiling. I don’t think you’ll have any problem finding your buds.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Claudia in Milton, Washington. I’m glad you called. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Rush, it’s such a pleasure to speak with you. I saw you in 2000, you remember when you and Bill Bennett came to the Puyallup Fairgrounds and —
RUSH: Yeah, I do.
CALLER: — and like 20,000 people came out?
RUSH: We went out there for John Carlson, and we were out there at that giant arena, 40,000 people.
CALLER: Okay, I’m sorry. I was wrong on the numbers. Well, anyway we were parked over in the parking lot, and we saw your helicopter take off. It was almost like watching a rock star.
RUSH: (laughing) Yeah. Well, I remember. That was a fun day.
CALLER: That was a good day. Thank you for what you do. I watched your interview on Fox News Sunday. You looked swell.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I was going to mention a little bit about how terrible our medical care is here. I’m saying that facetiously. My husband flunked a treadmill test a couple of weeks ago and within 20 minutes we were in a cardiologist’s office one floor down and within five days he was having an angiogram. And it came out great, you know, which was an answered prayer.
RUSH: Well, I wouldn’t say flunked it. I’d say the test probably did what it was designed to do.
CALLER: Exactly. Exactly. But my point being, I don’t think that we would have received the — you know, within a week we were being seen, to under this beast that they have waiting for us.
RUSH: Hm-hm. Let me tell you something. Mike Pence has cut a video. We got a YouTube address of it here. It takes three minutes to play the whole video but it’s got some really, really excellent points. It’s about health care. ‘As President Ronald Reagan said: ‘Since the American founding, we have been a people with a government, not the other way around.’ Now comes the Pelosi plan for a government takeover of health care. It is a freight train of runaway spending, bloated bureaucracy –‘ you know, 111 new bureaucracies are created, 111 new bureaucracies have been found so far. ‘If the liberals in Washington have their way, they will forever change the relationship between the government and ‘we the people.’ If the Pelosi plan for a government takeover of health care passes, we will each become dependent –‘ this goes to right what you were going to say ‘– on the political class in Washington for the provision of services of the most urgent and personal nature.’
CALLER: Well, I thought about all of the red tape that we would have had to go through to see the cardiologist and to set up the cardiac catheterization, and it would have been a nightmare. Everything happened in a five-day period. I’m grateful we have really good medical coverage and a great doctor and a good hospital and he’s feeling well and back to work, and it’s scary as heck. I’m reminded of that gal that called a couple of calls ago, Christie. I’m a housewife, I started listening to you in 1998, it was a liberal relative that turned me on to you, and it took a sex scandal to get me involved —
RUSH: Ah, the Lewinsky thing.
CALLER: And suddenly I was listening to America held hostage, and the My Heart Will Go On song that you would play. And I really haven’t missed a day since then. You know, a day without Rush is like a day without sunshine.
RUSH: A day without oxygen.
CALLER: That too. And I thank you for what you do and keep fighting the good fight and I’m pleased to speak to the titular head of the Republican Party.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I went and looked the word up. I hadn’t ever used it in conversation before.
RUSH: Yeah. Titular head of the Republican —
CALLER: Anyway, God bless you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you Claudia, same to you. God bless you. Thanks very much.
CALLER: Bye-bye.
RUSH: Bye. I want you to hear the rest of what Pence had to say here. ‘If the Pelosi plan for a government takeover of health care passes, we will each become dependent on the political class in Washington for the provision of services of the most urgent and personal nature. Illness, our own, or more importantly the illness of a parent, or a spouse, or a child, has the capacity to suspend our priorities. What was important before the crisis grows dim in the harsh light of disease affecting a loved one. The Pelosi health care plan targets us when we are most vulnerable. The Pelosi health care plan makes us dependent on the state at the most urgent moment in the life of our family. Their hope: that little by little, we’ll yield our freedoms and our resources to the ever-growing appetite of the federal government.
‘After years of runaway federal spending, borrowing, bailouts and takeovers, it’s easy to give way to despair; but I assure you: there is a remnant that still cherishes freedom, personal responsibility and limited government all across this land. I have seen it in the faces of ordinary Americans who have traveled to rallies, town halls and tea parties. I have read it in my mail. I have heard it from friends and neighbors who have lost their jobs but not lost their faith in America. The time has come for those who still cherish our ideals — the ideals of our founding: life, liberty and the pursuit of the American dream — to arise. Wherever you are, whoever you are, let your voice be heard. Republicans in Congress who are standing in the gap, cannot do this alone. I often tell my colleagues that a minority in Congress plus the American people equals a majority. ‘We the people’ have the power to stop out-of-control spending at the federal level. ‘We the people’ have to power to stop the Pelosi health care plan, in its effort to take over one-sixth of the American economy.’
‘Let Your Voice Be Heard,’ is the title. Mike Pence. There was a YouTube link to it here, and it’s going viral out there on the Internet.