RUSH: I think what Obama is actually aiming for, when all is said and done… You know, I would do this if I were him. If I were the Democrats, and if I were in their position, I would go for the total wipeout. I would go in for the kill. Why, the way poor old Obama has been treated by the people of this country for four years, I wouldn’t expect him to be magnanimous or nice.
I mean, it’s payback time now, and here’s what I think he’s up to. I think Obama wants a confession. And I don’t mean a Republican standing up and saying anything. I think, at the end of this deal with the Republicans — and remember, there is no common ground. I know a lot of people want bipartisanship, compromise, both sides giving a little. There isn’t any. There’s no common ground.
Some of you may not agree with me here, so I want to try to expand on it just a little bit because you have to look at what both parties want here, and in the process you’ll get what they ostensibly stand for. So the Republicans want entitlement reform. They’re in no position to get it, by the way. The Republicans are in no position to win anything. They can hold out, but they can’t get what they want.
There’s no reason to!
Why would Obama give the Republicans anything they want? Why would he? Only we do that. No. Obama doesn’t compromise. Community organizers and so forth don’t compromise. He’d be happy with the illusion of compromise and bipartisanship, but there isn’t any. The Republicans, if they stay true to form, recognize that what we have here totally is a spending problem.
When Jay Carney says that we can’t “afford” to extend the current tax rates, that is a profound statement. The president’s spokesman is saying that the nation cannot “afford” for people making over $250,000 to keep what they’re keeping. It is entirely their fault. Our deficit and debt problem is entirely due to the fact that high earners aren’t paying enough of what they earn to fund the government. There’s no compromise in that.
As far as Obama and the Democrats are concerned, there should be no limit on spending. In fact, you heard Geithner say, one of his demands in the deal is that the president gets to lift the debt limit singularly and arbitrarily. He wants to take the whole notion of a debt limit off the table. There won’t be one. He wants total control over it. So the fault here is not that the government is too big. The fault is not that there’s too much spending.
The problem is not that we’re wasting money. The problem is entirely that the people able to are not paying enough for it, and that’s gotta change. That means that the only people with any money left are gonna have to fork over more of it. Now, the Republicans think that it’s entirely the opposite. It’s a spending problem. The government’s too big and spending money and borrowing money it doesn’t have.
Entitlements have gotten too big, and they can’t be sustained at the current level of spending and taxation, and they haven’t been sustainable for quite a while. So what the Republicans want to do is reform entitlements, such as raising the eligibility age for Social Security, or eliminating it or means testing it for certain people at certain income levels because we can’t afford it.
Democrats say, “What do you mean, take it away from them? There’s no way! There is no way! Entitlement reform?” They donÂ’t want that. They want more money to expand it. There is no common ground, folks. There simply is no middle ground here at all. Compromise is impossible. All that can happen and all that will happen is one side will concede, and what Obama wants is a confession.
When this is all said and done, Obama wants it understood that this problem was caused by George Bush; that the Republicans are responsible for the debt. The Republicans are responsible for the deficit. The Republicans are responsible for the entitlements maybe not being able to pay what their promises are, because Bush didn’t take enough money from people who could afford it.
Bush instituted tax cuts twice, 2001 and 2003, that we couldn’t afford. So at the end of the day… You know, Obama spent four years blaming George W. Bush. We all laughed. We all said, “Man up.” We all said, “Come on, man. You’ve added $6 trillion all by yourself! This is not leadership. This is not even manly. This is not even manhood. This isn’t even courageous. To sit around and blame your predecessor?”
Well, not only did he do it, but a majority of voters also blamed George Bush. We saw it in the polls. So what I think Obama is aiming for is, essentially, a confession from the Republicans that this is their fault. And in getting it, in getting that confession, Obama seeks to ensure that there will never, ever be tax cuts again. “Because look what they led to.” And when or if the Republicans concede, that will be the story.
The seeds have been planted. The sprouts are growing and they’re soon to bloom. “Bush did it! Bush and the Republicans did this.” From the Founders to Bush, they did this. This country was founded improper and unjustly and immorally and unfairly, and we’ve finally reach a tipping point where those guys couldn’t live off their illusion. These 230 years have been a mistake, and now we’re fixing it.
And at the end of all this, the Republicans will end up admitting that President Obama is right. Now, Boehner’s not gonna call a press conference and say any of this. That’s not going to happen. He won’t have to. The media will take care of this for Obama. A confession: “Republicans admit that if there had been higher taxes for the past decade, there wouldn’t be a deficit, and the national debt would not have grown. The budget would have been balanced.
“In fact, we’d still have a surplus! We would still have the Clinton surplus, if Bush hadn’t cut those taxes. Tax cuts are to blame.” That will be the single lesson learned when this is over: “Tax cuts caused this,” and 98% of the American people will be told that tax cuts for 2% caused this, and they will accept that. They will believe that. So that down the road, the next time… What is the Republican Party singularly known for? Cutting taxes.
So ten years from now, five years from now, a Republican is back in the White House, maybe, and proposes tax cuts. “Oh, we can’t do that! Look what happened the last time we did it with Bush. Look what happened.” Obama will be removed from the equation. In fact, Obama’s involvement in the equation will be as the fixer. Obama will be the savior. He will be the solution.
He will have identified the problem. He will have persuaded the country of the problem, and he will have beaten back the Republicans into admitting that they were the problem. He doesn’t want the Republicans crying “uncle.” He wants them crying “Bush.” That’s where this is headed. That’s why the money doesn’t matter. That’s why all of this is smoke and mirrors. All this talk about $800 billion to pay for this, to reduce the deficit here? The CBO says all of that is a distraction.
It is smoke and mirrors. It’s entirely irrelevant. In fact, Obama has demonstrated in his first four years that he doesn’t care about that. In fact, running up this debt and annual deficits of over a trillion dollars have been done purposely so that we arrive at this point, so that it can all be blamed on tax cuts. You think that sounds too simplistic, that it’s gotta be more complicated than that? Well, there are a lot of intricacies in it.
If you destroy that for a generation of people, low-information voters who believe that tax cuts caused all this, tax cuts is why they can’t get a job, tax cuts is why their home is underwater, tax cuts is why their student loan debt is so high? That’s what the objective is here. The end result, of course, has more objectives. That is, all this money ends up in government. The Democrats are in perpetual power. The government is consistently growing and is in charge of much more of everybody’s life.
That, of course, is the ultimate aim, too. I’m not saying that’s not part of it. But, the icing on the cake — the cherry on top, the angel on the Christmas tree, the order of fries to complete the Happy Meal, whatever — is the Republicans admitting that Bush did it, that tax cuts caused all these problems. “And Obama, God bless him, just risked his political career to fix it! He it risked his presidency, but he did what needed to be done after 230 years of what was basically fraud.”
The Alinsky way.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: When your grandchildren start grade school in a few years, what will they be taught? Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and tax cuts in the 1980s led to the Great Recession of 2007 through 2009. It’s gonna be in the history books. That’s what Obama is aiming for here, and an entire generation of students will grow up learning this, and thus believing it. That’s the objective. Make no mistake about this. It’s why I said Obama was doing all this on purpose from the get-go.
I remember telling Chris Wallace, I did a interview for Fox News Sunday some years ago now. And I said, “I think it’s all on purpose.” I could tell that he thought I was a little bit off my rocker, but he likes me, so he didn’t say, “Come on, you’re nuts.” He said, “Rush, do you really think…”
“I do, Chris.”
Nobody can convince me otherwise. This is not just standard, ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill Democrat versus Republican political battle that we think of politics as. This is moving in for the kill of the Republican Party. What will happen if that does happen, of course the Tea Party gets born, and it’s a whole new generation of energized opponents to all this rather than mealymouths who want to compromise with it, which is where we are now. So it will be opposed, don’t misunderstand. And it will have righteous opposition from a lot of Americans. But it will not involve any of the current establishment of the Republican Party.
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