RUSH: Here is Chris, Sioux Falls, South, Dakota. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thank you for taking my call. I wanted to second what your first caller said. Jason. I think we totally screwed ourselves when we sat back and allowed John Boehner to be elected Speaker of the House after we elected all these great Tea Party people in there and —
RUSH: What is this “we”?
CALLER: We Republicans.
RUSH: I know, but what did we have to do with it?
CALLER: Well, we just allowed it to happen. I mean —
RUSH: No. How would you have stopped it? You’re not there. You have to be a member of the House to nominate somebody, to be Speaker, to seek it. That’s pretty much the House did that, not us.
CALLER: Right but we didn’t protest it we came out in droves for all these others things and it was just kind of like… I don’t know, I feel like we just sat back and allowed it to happen.
RUSH: Well, did you have your doubts despair.
CALLER: I did, and I regret not saying anything earlier.
RUSH: You had your doubts about Speaker Boehner before he became Speaker?
CALLER: Yeah. And I just want to make sure that we don’t do this come 2012 and elect an oldie-moldy Senator like we did with McCain and Dole and get trounced again.
RUSH: Well, let me tell you what we’re up against here. I mean, I’m probably not going to tell anything you don’t know. We’re up against an entrenched Republican establishment, the old guard that in many ways is just happy to be there, and they are happy to have the power of leadership. But in terms of taking these guys on and actually rolling some of this back with they don’t have the stomach for it. I don’t think a lot of them really have the stomach for it. They have the desire to win pieces of legislation day to day and week to week, but in terms of being revolutionaries, I don’t think that that’s who we’ve got here. Now, I’m talking about current leadership. You’ve got, obviously, some freshmen and some of the Tea Party people, that’s why they think they’re there. Obviously.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I’m interested to know what your doubts were about Speaker Boehner before the election. What did you know about him?
CALLER: Uh, that he cried a lot. Well, and he seemed like a nice guy but he seemed like a George Bush nice guy.
RUSH: But what I’m getting at is, you knew that or suspected that long before the Republicans even won the election.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Yeah. I don’t know that many people thought that. I’ll just take you back, though. You remember, there were people that wanted to be Speaker that did run against Boehner. One of them was Michele Bachmann, and if, there were a lot of people others put do you remember how everybody just laughed at them? “Oh, come on! Be serious!” Everybody just laughed when they said that. “You want to be Speaker? No, that’s not serious. Come on, you’re not even in line yet.” There was laughter at the thought. How many people in your life are there examples like this: something that you pooh-poohed, months later you wish it had really happened? You wish you had taken something seriously that you pooh-poohed. It happens to a lot of people all the time — very rarely to me, but it happens to a lot of people all the time, and it sounds like you are going through this circumstance even now.
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RUSH: A lot, my friends, I must tell you… There’s a lot of vitriol, a lot of anger, and some of you are actually being quite impolite in your e-mails to me today. I made reference to the fact that I played golf with John Boehner. Okay, strike one. Hee-hee-hee. Number two, I said, “Look, before we get off down the path, he’s a fine guy. He’s a good guy.” You don’t want to hear that, apparently, and the fact that I played golf with him has compounded my assessment. Some of you think I’m ready to sell out. I kid you not, Snerdley. The e-mails accuse me of almost now I’m carrying Boehner’s water.
Folks, I’m gonna tell you something right now. I can’t tell you how I know this but if you think I’m carrying the water you ought to know that my name is being bandied about up there in Washington by certain Republicans, and it ain’t pretty. They are complaining about me to themselves, and they are telling members not to appear on this and other shows. If you think I’m carrying Boehner’s water, you need to understand: They don’t think anybody’s carrying their water, and they’re upset about it. Just so you know. You know, I love analogies. And you and I, one of the things we’ve always said about the leadership here is that we’re all in the now.
To us, this is 2011, on into 2012. But some of the people representing us may still be in 2000, and they may just not have the stomach for this. They may not just have the desire to, as part of their leadership role, take on Obama, take on the Democrats, and literally roll back some of this stuff. They may look at the Tea Party as something to be managed and massaged rather than used as a weapon. So Obama goes out and makes speech like he does yesterday. To you and I, well, he’s thrown down the gauntlet.
That’s a full-fledged an insult. It is a come-on, it’s an invitation, it is, “All right, pal, if that’s how you look at us, and that’s how you look at the country, battle on. Is that what you want?” But that’s not how they’re doing it. They don’t see the speech that way. Now, Ryan is a different guy. He’s in the leadership, but I’m exempting him. But obviously that speech yesterday that Obama gave… Here’s the analogy. To us, that was in-your-face hostility. That was the president of the United States being hostile to us, to what we believe, and thus toward our country. But to RINOs, to country club Republicans, to Ruling Class Republicans, it was no more offensive than Obama showing up at 21 without a tie.
So they ran back and they got him a tie and they let him in the dining room. Not a big deal. Not a real big affront to anything. You know, the maitre d’ can handle the problem. “Oh, look, there’s our President. Damn it, he forgot his tie.” We don’t look at it that way. It’s just an entirely different way of looking at the circumstance or the situation — and it’s not, by the way, just in our leadership. There are certain places in our media. This is the Weekly Standard, a journal of opinion. It’s in the same family as National Review, American Spectator, New Republic. It’s a journal of opinion, conservative, and here’s the headline: “Calm Down: The Budget Deal Isn’t as Bad as You Think.” Now, we just found out that the actual amount of dollars cut is not $38.5 billion, not $20 billion. It’s $352 million. That’s how much has actually been cut, and yet here’s the headline: “Calm Down: The Budget Deal Isn’t as Bad as You Think.” Gotta with start someplace. So there’s a disconnect with RINOs, Ruling Class Republicans, and us throughout the spectrum.
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RUSH: Bellefontaine, Ohio, and this is Don. Don, it’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, I can’t b’lieve it. After 15 years, I get through.
RUSH: Here you are, sir. Your big show biz break.
CALLER: Listen, I’m an ex-politician from Belle Fountain, Ohio, and I told your call screener that Ryan and the other Republican boys shoulda got up and walked out of that meeting. This President shows no respect. If we’re supposed to respect the President, then the President should respect the high offices of the Congress.
RUSH: Well, he clearly doesn’t.
CALLER: Well, I know, and this had been a good way to demonstrate it. I don’t know who he thinks he is.
RUSH: Oh, come on, yes, you do. He’s The Messiah. He’s got a gift. It’s what he told Harry Reid. He’s special.
CALLER: I know. I know.
RUSH: You really woulda walked out?
CALLER: I woulda walked out. I’ve been in politics just on a minor level, and I know just a little bit about it.
RUSH: Well, that’s not what they’re gonna do. They would look at that as being too provocative and I think probably they don’t want to send the signal that Obama gets to ’em. Who knows? But your point is well taken. It was audacious. It was… I don’t know. It was so unprofessional. It was a disaster! It was a literal disaster of the speech, but the media — see this is the thing, folks. The media loved it. They are praising it to the hilt. They love it when Obama takes it to us. That’s why he did the speech. I cannot emphasize this enough.
One of the reasons for the tone, that’s who he is. Another reason for the tone of the speech, the content, he loves that. He knows that his base hates us. They want to hear that kind of stuff, they want to hear him talk to us that way. That’s how they would talk to us if they had a chance. They want him to do it, and he’s gotta shore up his base. He’s losing in almost every voter group. He’s losing even African-Americans. He’s trending down in the polls. I’ll tell you what, grab audio sound bites eight at least through ten. Let’s get some Republican response to it. Yesterday afternoon the Republicans held a press conference around four o’clock to respond to Obama’s speech. He’s Jeb Hensarling from Texas up first.
HENSARLING: He spent approximately a half an hour giving us a history listen, blaming everyone for the nation’s fiscal woes but himself, attacking the Path to Prosperity budget and setting a new standard for class warfare rhetoric. I don’t know about my colleagues, but I thought to myself: “Did I miss lunch for this?”
RUSH: Here is Eric Cantor, who is from Virginia.
CANTOR: What happened after that is the president goes and delivers a speech in which the only concrete proposal that he proposed was raising taxes, and that solution falls far short of dealing with the kind of crisis that we are facing as far as the debt’s concerned in this country. We have spoken to the specifics, Mr. President. We are serious. Where are you?
RUSH: At the Republican press conference, Paul Ryan, who was the target of Obama’s insults.
PAUL RYAN: I’m very disappointed in the president. What we got was a speech that was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to addressing our country’s pressing fiscal challenges. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief. What we heard today was a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.
RUSH: Later, Ryan appeared on the Kudlow Report with the host Larry Kudlow on CNBC. They talked about the budget, deficit reduction speech. Kudlow says, “Does this speech that Obama gave, does this poison with the for a debt limit deal?”
PAUL RYAN: As far as a debt limit, you know, we’re just gonna have to forget about the president ’cause he’s out campaigning — giving us this kind of demagoguery and this kind of rhetoric — and we’re gonna have to work with our colleagues, Democrat colleagues here in Congress, act like adults and try and get a solution to that particular problem which we intend on doing.
RUSH: And he kept on going…
PAUL RYAN: I really was led to believe that this was gonna be more of an olive branch speech. Instead of getting a speech from a leader, from our commander-in-chief on some constructive path forward on deficit reduction, we got a partisan gauntlet from the campaigner-in-chief. He’s poisoning the well, basically called us un-American for offering our budget — which, by the way, preserves the social safety net, makes it stronger; saves Medicare and Medicaid; pays off our national debt; and gets the economy growing through growth, job creation, and prosperity. So, you know, he basically said it was all these evil things that it does. I just find that really astounding.
RUSH: Well, I can imagine he would find it astounding. See, I don’t. I’m not astounded he would say it. That’s who they are. At some point, we are going to begin expecting what we know is coming from these people and react accordingly. Kudlow then had another question: “Okay, is entitlement reform out the window now? Obama’s gonna go back to his commission, which I think of as kind of the Central Planning Price Controlling Commission, and that’s gonna be in charge allegedly for lowering Medicare. He has very harsh words towards your ideas. Is entitlement reform gone out the window now?”
PAUL RYAN: He’s saying instead of more choice and competition he wants to delegate more power to this IPAB. It’s like 12 people who can’t be controlled by Congress, who can just unilaterally price control and ration health care through Medicare. So he just wants to do more price controlling and rationing, and you know as well as I do price controls do not fight inflation. Price controls don’t lower prices. They just bring more scarcities and deny services. We don’t want to go down that path.
RUSH: Right. Okay. That’s Paul Ryan, on Kudlow, reacting to Obama’s speech. Now let’s move forward to audio sound bite number 16. Former member of Congress from Virginia, a RINO Republican by the name of Tom Davis who doesn’t particularly like me. I’ve never tried to play golf with him. I don’t know if he’s a fine guy or not. But he was on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown today, and Savannah Guthrie, who is one of the babes that hopes to get the Today show gig when Meredith Vieira leaves — yeah, she’s in the running. Savannah Guthrie is in the running for Meredith Vieira’s gig. Well, Savannah Guthrie, it’s Ann Curry, and there’s a couple others in there.
You know, I was told back in the old days at MSNBC (I really don’t know if this was true, but I was told by somebody who would know) that whenever they hired an infobabe, they always dangled, “Hey, you know, you could be Today show. That’s where we’re thinking of you,” and then ten years later, “I thought you said the Today show?” “Oh, it’s still possible.” At any rate, Savannah Guthrie is talking to Tom Davis — who, again, I have not tried to play golf with him, I never have played golf with him, I don’t know if he’s a fine guy. I know he’s not particularly crazy about me. He’s a RINO, and she said, “Congressman, you are a Republican, but you are a no longer in orifice perform are Republicans credible when they say they want to attack this deficit problem without touching taxes?”
DAVIS: Everybody agrees you need more revenue. At the end of the day, when you sit across the table, you really talk about a deal, you’re talking about taxes and not just on the rich.
RUSH: Tom Davis. So here’s a Republican RINO, former member of Congress essentially committing — well, not committing, but saying, “Oh, yeah, taxes, gonna have to raise taxes on everybody, not just the rich.”
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