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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: Dr. Frank Luntz. Dr. Frank Luntz was at Orlando, Florida, on Wednesday at the Republican Governors Association, and Dr. Frank Luntz said this.

LUNTZ: I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death. Okay, “they should occupy a job” and “take a bath.” I get that joke. But, man! They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism. And so I’m trying to get that word removed and replace it with either economic freedom or free market.

RUSH: So Frank Luntz, favored pollster of Fox News, is now telling Republican governors, “Don’t use the word ‘capitalism.'” It hurts us. Frank Luntz is trying to get the word “capitalism” removed from the conservative Republican lexicon; and instead replace it with either economic freedom or free market. Frank Luntz says, “I’m so scared of the anti-Wall Street effort. I am frightened to death.” They’re about disbanded, aren’t they? They’ve migrated to where it’s a little warmer than it was. I got 15 of them to show up the other night. Obama got a hundred of them. What is there to be afraid of, for crying out loud? But there you have it! There’s capitulation, and now we can’t use the word.


And I gotta tell you, these Republican types will listen to him. Luntz plays the role that George Lakoff (rhymes with) plays for the Democrats. He’s a pollster, consultant, advisor, communication specialist and so forth; and so now, “We can’t say the word ‘capitalism.’ It scares people to death. That’s bad! Capitalism? Oh, that’s how you lose elections now! Don’t say ‘capitalism.’ Say ‘free markets’ or ‘economic freedom.’ Can’t say ‘capitalism.'” So once again, we dumb down ourselves. We dumb down ourselves in order not to offend the uninformed, ill-informed, malinformed, uneducated, whatever. We don’t want to offend the Occupy people and we don’t want to offend the people who like the Occupy people and we don’t want to offend the people who believe the Occupy people are making sense.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, I have an e-mail here, a bunch of them. “Come on, Rush! What do you really think of this Frank Luntz business? You’re gonna slough it off?” All right, I’ll tell you what I think about this Frank Luntz business. It frustrates me. A Republican consultant running around saying we have to stop using the word capitalism; I’m really afraid of the Wall Street crowd and so forth? You know me, folks: I don’t think we run from ’em. I think we take it to them. Why do we let them redefine words? Why do we let them have control of the language? Why do we cede this stuff to them? It’s not about changing who we are. Okay, you can tell Republicans, “Don’t do that! Don’t do that! Don’t go there! Don’t do that! It’s gonna be seen! Oh, no, no, no.”

Why? We got a guy who… (sigh) We all know the economic circumstance of the country. We’ve got somebody that cannot possibly run on his economic record. What, are we afraid to compare our beliefs with Obama’s? Are we afraid to compare our beliefs with the Occupy Wall Street people? If we’re not gonna do that — if at the end of the day here we are not gonna compare and contrast our beliefs with Obama’s and the left’s, and if we’re not gonna do it today when the nation is experiencing the consequences of left-wing policies — then when will we? At some point we’ve gotta stand up for who we are! At some point we’ve gotta say, “We are conservatives and this is how we envision the country, and it ain’t what’s happening now.”


When are we going to defend this country’s greatness and explain to people why it’s great, rather than capitulate? I don’t know, folks. (sigh) I think it’s just boils down to the fact that the establishment of the Republican Party is not really conservative. That’s all this means. It’s all this really is. They’re just not really conservative. Quasi-sometimes on certain things, but something is wrong where we sit around and take ourselves apart rather than the other side. We have articles out there all over the place today in the conservative world again about Newt and Cain and how bad they are and about how horrible they are. We don’t have any stories anywhere about how bad Obama is, how bad Obama has been. We don’t have any story about how bad Pelosi and Reid or any of that is.

No, no! We have stories about how rotten Cain is, and you can listening to the callers for this program — “Well, I don’t like this; I don’t like that candidate” — and it mirrors the coverage in mainstream media. One way to explain this, I think, is all of us are so much more informed on every candidate and that candidate’s views today than we ever have been that it’s making it awfully difficult to find anybody perfect. We know every flaw. We know flaws that we didn’t know about people before, and it lends itself to people thinking nobody’s worth it and nobody’s good enough, because we know all of these flaws. So now “communism” is a hip word!

We have seen Andy Stern writing a piece in the Wall Street Journal that we gotta become more like the Chinese communists and it’s a romantic notion, and capitalism is evil. What planet are we on? We’re just gonna sit here and concede that Obama has succeeded in making capitalism a dirty word, that work is a dirty word, that work is a dirty concept? Okay, next we’re gonna hear, “Let’s not talk about people working. It’s gonna offend all the people that can’t. It’s gonna offend all the people that don’t and you’re gonna stigmatize them. You’re gonna make those people that are not working feel bad and they’re gonna hate you and they’re gonna vote for Democrats.”

Is that the way we’re gonna think about this? Is that how we’re gonna be advising candidates? Let’s do this. How many millions of people has communism killed and how many millions of people has capitalism killed? How many millions of people has communism fed; how many millions of people has capitalism fed?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: What a day. We’ve got a Republican consultant saying don’t use the word “capitalism.” Frank Luntz also told the governors, I’m told, that the best thing a Republican can say to the Occupy crowd is, “I got it.” A Republican candidate, the best thing to say to these protesters is, “I get it, I get it.” What a day and what a… You talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? It’s just amazing here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to leave you and Frank Luntz and every Republican candidate out there, every governor, everybody who showed up. What has been going on in this country since 2008 is not capitalism. Capitalism is not responsible for what’s happened to this country since 2008. Barack Obama is! Capitalism does not need to be defended. Capitalism is not responsible for all of this unemployment and economic degradation. Capitalism has not been tried the last three years.

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