Failure of Liberalism on Display

RUSH: Mike in Fairfield, California, great to have you on the program. You’re up first today.

CALLER: Maha Rusty Limbaugh mmm, mmm, mmm.

RUSH: Mmm, mmm, mmm.

CALLER: Greetings from California.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: People’s Republic of. Rush, Mr. Obama, after the detonation in Massachusetts, seems to be giving a little head fake towards this triangulation, after hearing his comments about how he didn’t make any backroom deals. It appears to me he’s trying to put a little space between him and Aunt Nancy and Uncle Harry.

RUSH: There are a lot of people who see that exact thing. Triangulate, like Clinton did, put himself above conservatives and Republicans and put himself above Democrats. And there are a lot of people on the left who are telling him, ‘Don’t do that.’ Most of the people on the left, most of the people in his base want him to come out ripping a new one. They want him to be angry as hell. They want him to continue to bash the Republicans, they want him to talk about jobs and blame Wall Street for everything that’s going wrong. They want Obama fit to be tied just as they are. They are fit to be tied over his spending freeze. They actually think that that matters, that it’s some big deal, which it of course is not. But the people live on growing government and bigger government, government spending, and the left is frosted. It’s just one year, just one year, the failure of Obama and the failure of liberalism on display, and all it took was one election, one election. The Ted Kennedy seat held by Ted Kennedy for 47 years, now gone, held by a Republican.

Waterbury, Connecticut, Mark. Great to have you on the program. Nice to have you with us.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Appreciate your taking my call.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: This so-called stimulus package is going up by $75 billion from $787 billion to $862 billion.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: And this is to pay for unemployment benefits. Now, as sorry as I am for the unemployed, I have a question, and that question is, ‘How is that stimulus?’ I mean, to me, a true stimulus would be allowing businesses to keep their money so they can hire more people.

RUSH: Exactly right.

CALLER: Now, Caterpillar laid off 20,000 people, and this is the very business that, you know, Obama was using as an example to how the stimulus was working.

RUSH: Exactly right.

CALLER: I hate to say this about our own president but I now think he’s a fool. I’m sorry.

RUSH: Dangerous fool. Dangerous fool. What he has stimulated is government. The $787 billion stimulus was actually closer to one trillion. Don’t forget, my friends, that he had to do a bunch of stuff like they did in the Senate to get people to vote for this, to get his own Democrats to vote for this. So the $787 was actually closer to a trillion when you add the pork in there, but Mark here is right. It is $75 billion more expensive than estimated, now $862 billion because it didn’t work. If it had, revenues would have picked up. But what has happened is it’s cost more because of the extension of unemployment benefits. I mean this is laughable if it weren’t so serious. It has stimulated nothing but government, which is what Obama wanted to do. And this whole speech tonight, State of Obama, is designed to convince you he’s changing, sees the light, while he continues these same policies. Make no mistake, this is what he wants to happen. If they were willing to totally ram a health care bill down everybody’s throat that nobody wanted, they will not stop with any of the rest of their agenda. They’ll just proceed to the parts of it they think they can get done. I wouldn’t be fooled by any new attitude, policy shifts, focus change, any of that.

Joe in Ventura, California, you’re next. Thanks for calling.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Two quick comments. First, you had mentioned earlier about him firing all of his czars. I would assume Premier Obama tonight will announce that he’s going to have a Medicare fraud czar. I’d like to see him implement that.

RUSH: Are you serious?

CALLER: (laughing.)

RUSH: Medicare fraud?

CALLER: You know, I mean in this health care plan they were going to attack all the fraud in Medicare.

RUSH: That’s right. That’s where they’re going to get the savings to —

CALLER: That’s right, that’s right.

RUSH: — make it revenue neutral.

CALLER: Yeah. And the other thing real quick is Limbaugh’s folly where we buy Mexico on the condition that after Obama’s first term, him and Reid and Pelosi and Schumer and Frank, it’s mandated that they go down there and run it, all the liberals have to run Mexico.

RUSH: (laughing) The Mexican government might have something to say about that. But the Medicare fraud, speaking of which, I’ve heard some people on the Democrat side say we want to scale back our health care proposal and go for it in smaller increments, which I have no doubt they’ll try at some point. I hope they do. I hope they bring it back, and I hope that it continues to roil people all the way through the summer, and they’re just obstinate enough to try it. Don’t forget, I’ve been talking to a lot of people out here, and it’s interesting to hear the opinions of people who are casually involved. Of course, when it comes to health care, I think most people are much more than casually involved. But it seems that one of the reasons the Democrats are in big trouble is that what people really want is for the people that don’t have insurance to have it. And then they want costs to come down and they think it’s not that complicated. They don’t understand what’s so complicated about insuring the people that don’t have insurance except when it boils down to the fact that everybody who does have insurance is going to have to pay for it, and they don’t like that of course but they think it’s just not humane in America that people would be so uninsured and they want to get costs under control and the Democrats addressed none of that, that was not going to happen in either of those two events.