RUSH: There is a story in the Capitol Hill newspaper today: ‘Republicans Wrestle With How They Would Govern in the Majority — Republicans are beginning to publicly wrestle with how they would govern if they capture control of Congress two weeks from now in the midterm elections.’ Really? I’m intrigued. Do you want to read on? ‘As polls show the GOP within striking distance of winning back the House and the Senate, Republican lawmakers are facing competing pressures to either work constructively to help govern or to live up to their electoral promises,’ as though you can’t do both. Let me tell you what the fork in the road is: America or Obama. We can’t have both. That’s the fork in the road. In fact, that’s the next cover of the Limbaugh Letter. Those of you who are fortunate enough to subscribe, wait ’til you see the cover of the next Limbaugh Letter. It’s a fork in the road, I’m driving, Obama on the left, America on the right. You can’t go both ways. You can’t have both at the same time.
‘Republican lawmakers are facing competing pressures to either work constructively to help govern –‘ i.e., compromise ‘– or to live up to their electoral promises,’ ’cause you can’t do both, they say at The Hill. You can’t live up to your electoral promises and govern constructively. ‘One senior Republican, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), on Tuesday questioned whether the party’s approach to one of the biggest issues in the election, the new healthcare reform law, is a good one. ‘I don’t think starving or repealing [the healthcare law] is probably the best approach here,’ Gregg said on the Fox Business Network. ‘You basically go in and restructure it.’ The comment from the retiring GOP senator reflects not only a shift in his own thinking, but also the tensions facing his party as it prepares to possibly retake the reins.’ Here’s the media coming right in here and telling the Republicans, you can’t fulfill the obligations of those wacko voters that are gonna elect you and govern constructively, you can’t do this. Meanwhile, CBS News is reporting the national debt is up three trillion on Obama’s watch, and we got a story about how a retiring Republican Senator says, ‘Not the way to go, we need to restructure.’
‘Republicans say their recalcitrance on fiscal issues led to their defeats in the 2006 and 2008 elections.’ No, what led to their defeat in 2006 is named Foley. In 2008, it is that they began to act like the elites inside the Beltway. What is this recalcitrance on fiscal issues? ‘They often mention they were ‘fired’ by voters those years and have promised to adhere to conservative principles should they regain control of either chamber. Many of the established Republicans are facing their ‘last shot’ with the party’s voters, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) said on Monday. Palin, who led an insurgency against establishment GOP figures earlier this year with Tea Party groups, said if Republicans don’t follow through on their promises, voters might start asking, ‘Why not a third party?” Well, this is a recipe for it. Except what’s going to happen is the Republican Party will be the third-party.
Now, how do you compromise with a $3 trillion increase in the national debt? One and a half trillion? Where do you compromise? Where is constructive governance on the national debt going up $3 trillion? RedState.com has more on the Judd Gregg situation. ‘Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said that repealing the new healthcare reform law — or looking to defund it — were not good options.’ And they have the quote here uttered on the Fox Business Network: ‘I don’t think starving or repealing is probably the best approach here. You basically go in and restructure it.’ What do you think is driving this? Do you think that what’s driving Senator Gregg is the issue, or is it maybe something else? What else drives politics, Mr. Snerdley? Money.
As Red State points out, ‘Senate leadership staff will say this is just Judd Gregg, who is retiring, and not reflective of the Senate GOP leadership. There is a problem though. In the past several weeks, there have been several closed door, off the record meetings of high dollar donors getting briefings from various elected officials.’ One of them was down here last week. I did not go to it. I was invited to a private introduction to it after it was over, which I didn’t do because I knew what was going to happen, but one of these ‘closed door, off the record meetings of high dollar donors getting briefings from various elected officials, including several senators. In each case the donors have been ‘reassured’ by the senators present that they have no intention of repealing Obamacare, just restructuring it.’ This is what big donors are being told by Senate leaders. ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, we’re gonna restructure it.’
‘The senators seemed to think the high dollar donors were not kooks like those tea party activists and would understand the practical need to just ‘restructure’ instead of ‘repeal.’ Unfortunately, the Senators have badly misread the donors. In any event, you can be sure that Judd Gregg is not speaking out of turn and is not a lone wolf on this issue. His view reflects that of the Senate GOP leadership despite their protestations to the contrary. … It is worth noting that neither Mitch McConnell nor Lamar Alexander have signed on as co-sponsors to Jim DeMint’s legislation that would repeal Obamacare.’ They haven’t signed it. They’re going after DeMint in their own way. Now, Judd Gregg’s a little bit of an Obamaite. He was Obama’s pick to be health care czar, he turned it down, remember. But northeastern so-called Republican.
Now, these Senate leaders and senators believe that their donors are not Tea Party people and that their donors think the Tea Party people are kooks. So they’re having these closed-door meetings, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, we know what we’re doing here, we’ll restructure, we’re not gonna repeal it,’ and I guess they’re finding out this is not what the donors have in mind. I know they were given an earful down here. And that’s that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I got an e-mail: ‘Rush, you didn’t tell the audience what the reaction was from the senators when they had that closed-door meeting that you said took place down in Florida last week.’ When the Senators came down here and said, ‘Look, we’re not the Tea Party, we’re not gonna repeal health care. We can’t really do any of that. We’re not going to have that kind of power. We’re not going to be able to run things, you better realize –‘ people want to know, what was the reaction?
I don’t know what the reaction of everybody in the room was. I talked to a couple people that were there and they told me they went up to the senators and said, ‘Well, if this is your attitude, you can kiss 2012 good-bye. If this is the way you’re looking at it, you can kiss any money from us and you can kiss 2012 good-bye.’ So that’s what they were told by, quote, unquote, big donors and quasi-important people. That’s just two of them that I know who were there. And one e-mail said, ‘Why weren’t you there?’ I don’t do the group stuff. I was asked to meet with them afterwards, which I couldn’t do because we had a bunch of people over, it was a Monday night. It was a week ago yesterday. I had a bunch of people over for a Monday Night Football party, and I couldn’t make it. But I did talk to a couple people who went. And they tell me full force that they said after the message, ‘If this is what you’re thinking, that you can’t repeal and that you don’t have that much power, and you’re not gonna really be able to effect change, then you can kiss 2012 good-bye. Obama and the Democrats are gonna be back in power if that’s the way you’re gonna approach this.’
I think to the extent that that happened here, and red states, apparently it’s happening in a lot of places around the country, I said, ‘Well, what was the reaction? What did their faces look like when you said to ’em, ‘Well, if that’s the way you’re gonna look at this, you can kiss 2012 good-bye,’ they just had blank stares on their faces?’ They said, ‘Yep, just had blank stares like they were broadsided with shock.’ So apparently when they’re meeting with high roller donors the presumption is the high roller donors are not you, not us. They’re not Tea Party. They’re not kooks, that they are more like the elites, a little bit more reasonable and so forth. I guess they’re finding out that that’s not the case. So apparently the message that’s going around here — the Politico piece today, the Wall Street Journal piece, and to the extent that it’s true, all of these private donor meetings around the country, sounds like the message is, ‘Yes, we can’t.’ Doesn’t it? I mean if you’re told, ‘Look, gotta keep things in perspective, we’re not gonna control the government. We’re not going to have that much power. We’re not going to be able to repeal anything, and certainly Obama’s going to have to come our way because he’s gonna want to get reelected.’ Sounds like ‘Yes, we can’t.’
Well, the moderate women Republican, did you hear what Lisa Murkowski is doing? A bunch of federal project people, people totally funded by federal projects are funding her rewrite or write-in campaign in Alaska. Yeah. A bunch of union types who exist on federal grants are paying for Murkowski’s write-in campaign in Alaska. But when you say the women Republicans, you mean the Palins and the Michele Bachmanns and Sharron Angle’s, yeah, you’re right; Christine O’Donnell. No, they’re not of that mind-set. We’re talking about elected. We’re talking about incumbents. I’ve been optimistic from the get-go, but I’ve also tempered it with reality. This is the first step of many. When have you known elites to give up power and control? They didn’t like it when Reagan won. I’ve gotten blue in the face explaining this to people. They even bided their time when Reagan won. And even at that they worked on Nancy to get their guys in there as chiefs of staff or advisors, you know, the elite blue-blood types. I don’t have to mention the names. (interruption) Well, who do you think I mentioned? No, not Deaver. Deaver and Baker were part of the original — (interruption) no, no, no. Well, which Baker? No, no, no, no. I’m thinking of Duberstein, Howard Baker, these guys. They came in late in the second term.
Even at that point, the ruling class Republicans still, rather than realize what they had in Reagan, still tried to get in there and massage it in their own image, in their own way, taking advantage of Iran-Contra to do so. Oh, yeah. I warned you about this. I’m optimistic because I’ve never seen a groundswell like this, not in my lifetime. Now, I’m sure it’s happened in the country, Civil War and the original Revolution. But this needs to be understood. This is just the first of many battles in the war here. I remember when I was a neophyte back when Democrats lost elections, and I said, ‘Okay, that’ll teach ’em.’ No ho-ho. It steels their resolve to be even worse. It’s like the lady just said, Obama’s gonna get shellacked here and it’s not gonna teach him anything. You are gonna become more stupid than ever, and you’re going to have to be punished for doing what you did. So, hello VAT tax; hello other tax increases. Oh, folks, they don’t learn their lessons. You’re supposed to learn yours when you don’t vote right.