RUSH: Stef in St. Louis. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. I’m a small-business guy here trying to survive. I started my business because in this economy, I couldn’t find a job. And my question is: If President Obama wanted to, what could he do to save America? Because I don’t see what he’s doing.
RUSH: Well, that’s a two-part question, if I understood your question. “What could Obama do to save America?”
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Okay, the two parts are, “What could he do?” and the second, “Does he want to save America?”
CALLER: Yes. Because, I’ll tell you, as a small business guy here, I’m pretty angry.
RUSH: Okay, there’s a one-word answer: “Resign.” Quit! Leave! I’m not kidding. If Obama wants to save America, resign, and then renounce. There is… Look, everything that he has said is that he likes what’s happened this far. He said, “We need more time. We haven’t had the time to fully implement our plan.” He wants to do exactly what he’s doing, only more of it. He wants to prolong the depression.
I must be blunt. I have to tell you what I think. A lot of people still can’t accept that, that we’ve actually elected a president who wants this kind of economy. But there are ways to stop this — there are ways — and he makes fun of ’em! He spent time making fun of tax cuts in his acceptance speech. He mocked ’em. He made fun of self-reliance. He made fun of entrepreneurism. He made fun of all these Ozzie and Harriet things, of a strong backbone, moral culture. He made fun of it all.
He made fun of everything that’s worked in the past. He made fun of the traditions and institutions that have defined this country’s greatness. He would have to totally renounce everything he says he believes to turn us around. He would have to renounce his support for the unions. He would have to renounce his support for big government. This is a guy who wants you to have a daily, devotional relationship with government. He wants that of the citizenry. He wants the citizenry in an almost… I think it’s sick, but he wants almost a perverted, literal attachment to government.
Government is the first thing people look to. It’s where they go for any problem to be solved. That’s what he wants, and none of that is gonna save the country. So the answer to the question is: “Resign!” Does somebody want to disagree with me on this? I welcome anybody who wants to disagree, to tell me I’m wrong. God, would I love to be wrong. You don’t know how I would love to be wrong about this. You don’t know. I don’t want any of this, but I know mathematics, and I know economics.
I know history. I know socialism, statism, Marxism. I know where it goes. I know what happens at the end of it. It has never, ever worked no matter who’s tried it. No matter how big their hearts. No matter how much they cared. No matter how cool they were; no matter how hip. (Even though they didn’t know how to use an iPhone, they were still hip.) It’s never worked. It has never provided abundance. The only thing that’s ever been in abundance is government power.
And there’s give and take in everything. The rise in government power takes place with the loss of individual liberty and freedom. I think, though, Obama thinks he is saving America. (interruption) What’s the question, Snerdley? What’s your problem in there? (interruption) Mmm-hmmm. (interruption) Well, Snerdley just said something rather provocative. I’m not… (interruption) He said, “The older Democrats…” Give me a name. (interruption) Okay. Okay. JFK has been the name mentioned here as I requested.
Snerdley says, “The old Democrats used to think of socialism the way we all think of it now.” Now, JFK did. He hated the Soviet Union. He was anti-communist. It was after JFK’s death the Democrat Party went through this massive transformation and began a solidarity with worldwide communists, be it in Nicaragua or even the Soviet Union. Ted Kennedy was constantly trying to warn the Soviets against Reagan. We didn’t know this at the time.
Many of us suspected it, but it wasn’t until the Berlin Wall fell down and all the documents of the KGB were released that we found out there were numerous phone calls and letters from Ted Kennedy to various Soviet leaders warning them about Reagan. I kid you not. But you have to go back a long time to find Democrats as opposed to socialism. But now this current crop of Democrats think they are the proper inheritors of all the previous failures, socialist and Marxist failures.
Obama thinks that he is saving America from itself. He thinks America us flawed, my friends. He thinks America is “imperfect” and that it can be “perfected.” In his speech, Obama promised that he would “pursue the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that FDR pursued during the only crisis worse than this one: The Great Depression.” Well, FDR — truth be told, FDR — extended the Depression to ram through more socialist programs. In the words of Rahm Emanuel, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
Like FDR, Obama realizes it’s a lot easier to ram through socialist programs when times are bad than when they’re good. He wants a bigger government. He wants more problems. He wants government as the solution to the problem. Therefore, he welcomes this. I know it’s hard to hear. Even people close to me don’t want to accept that. But you know as well as I do that it is easier to expand government when there’s a crisis and people want fixes and want answers.
If you have the right leaders, they say (impression), “I can fix it! I can put you back in your home, and I’ll get you a job, and I can make sure that you eat.” Well, he’s the guy. And if it gets worse? Then more fixes are necessary! Why, the more government offers and the more government promise. This is an ideal recipe for what Obama wants! There’s no incentive to reverse any of this. Obama thinks the country is imperfect and deeply flawed, and he is “saving” it.
It has been on the wrong course for 200-plus years, particularly the last 30, and it’s gonna take a long time to put us back on the right course where everybody is on the same team and everybody’s looking out for everybody else. And there’s shared this and there’s shared that. This might be a good time to bring up Kyle Smith’s piece in the New York Post yesterday: “Why Obama is Pitied.” I don’t know if it happens to you, but when I share… It’s not everybody, by the way, but there’s still some people.
When I share with them my thought that I just told you: Obama is benefiting from these crises. He’s growing government. He likes this stuff because it allows him to offer more fixes and government programs. He wants this situation. It’s how you grow government. It’s how you make it more involved in everybody’s daily life to the point that they can’t do without it, which is what he wants. I still have people who want to draw the line at him purposely doing it, because can’t believe that we’ve ever elected a president with that attitude about the country.
They just can’t believe it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Laurie in Miami. I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. This is a “make my day” moment.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: A thrill and an honor to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Of all the good things that Obama’s taking away from the American people, he blames this one on the economy. But Jimmy Carter had the same kind of recession economy. But during his administration the banks gave double-digit interest. And with Obama, we don’t even get 1% on our savings.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And every worker — and even the people on the dole that get a welfare check — always used to look forward to taking a few dollars out and socking it away in a little savings so that they’d have a little extra.
RUSH: Wait a minute. How do you know that? I never heard this. This is new. Welfare recipients sock some away?
CALLER: Well, maybe two or three dollars — or five or under. But was just the thrill of having something in the bank, even if it wasn’t their earned money. But the workers always did that. I know my uncles and dad, when they got their check, they’d turn it over to my aunt or mom. We’d always put a few dollars away for, you know, the rainy day and having a savings account, or now a CD or anything. But if you’re not getting even 1%, you might as well just throw it in the jar or under the mattress. And nobody’s protesting this. If a Republican was in office, they’d be marching on Washington and saying, “We’re not getting a penny! What happened? For years we’re not getting a penny. What good are banks?”
RUSH: Well, because now they’re saying there’s no inflation.
CALLER: Well, they come up with something. They blame it on inflation or the economy. But Jimmy Carter — who [Obama] is often likened to — had this same kind of situation. But he found at least to give the poor people of the land who worked and all to give them a little something for their hard-earned money.
RUSH: Yeah, that was so big of him. Yeah, that 18% inflation that Jimmy Carter had? He was really thinking of poor people there.
CALLER: No, that was bad, but there’s happy medium somewhere. I’m not saying you have to get rich but even if they gave you like two or three percent, which is low, but it keeps going lower. It’s not even 1%, and nobody’s been talking about it except the people I talked to in my community and all. They keep saying, “My goodness, what’s the sense of trying to get money in the bank or opening a CD? It’s a worthless piece of paper.”
RUSH: I know. What’s shocking to a lot of people is that anybody has any money to save period, regardless what the interest rate is.
CALLER: (chuckles) That’s very true. That’s one of the reasons I think he’s getting away with it.
RUSH: Yeah.