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RUSH: Here’s Mike Lee. I’m gonna get started on this. Mike Lee on the Senate floor today, said this is just the beginning of all this.

LEE: This is about this town, and it’s about the American people and what they deserve, what they demand, what they expect, and what they have a right to, which is the right to live free of undue interference from their national government. This vote is not the end. It’s not even the beginning of the end. This is simply the end of the beginning. Washington may appear to have the upper hand at this moment, but it’s essential that we remember that the American people will always have the final word.


RUSH: Folks, let me ask you a question. I want you to think about this as we go to the break. It has been asserted by some in the conservative movement media that Ted Cruz is running a really mean scam on you, just a trick. He knows that what he’s advocating isn’t possible. He’s just setting you up. Do you feel tricked? Do any of you feel like you’re being scammed by what Cruz and Mike Lee are doing?

I want you to think about that.

I’m serious.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, the theory is that Ted Cruz knows that this defunding of Obamacare isn’t gonna happen, never was gonna happen, and you’re just being tricked and used, and you’re gonna be sad and let down and enraged when you find that out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, so let’s just review something here. Dingy Harry, the Senate majority leader, is forcing a vote on a bill that includes a provision that defunds Obamacare. Oh, yes. You didn’t know this? That’s exactly right. Dingy Harry is forcing a vote on a bill that includes a provision that defunds Obamacare. This provision will be removed as soon as the bill is passed. The only reason Dingy Harry is doing this is so some senators can claim that they voted to defund Obamacare. And yet they want to tell us that it’s Ted Cruz who is scamming us. Yep. Ted Cruz is the scam artist. Ted Cruz is lying to you. Ted Cruz is misleading you. Ted Cruz is using you.

It’s all just a game, don’t you know. You’re being told to support something that doesn’t have a prayer. And Cruz, so goes the theory, knows it doesn’t have a prayer. But he’s misleading you. He’s tricking you. He’s trying to get you to sign petitions and call Washington and all that for something he knows that isn’t gonna happen. And so the question I have for you is, do you feel tricked? Do you feel Cruz is using you to either up his profile or raise money down the line? ‘Cause he’s not doing that. He sent an e-mail blast out late yesterday afternoon about this, and there was not a request for money in there.

When’s the last time that happened to you, by the way? You got some sort of e-mail from an elected official about some issue that there was not a request for money? When does that ever happen? But Cruz sent one of those out. So he’s not been asking for money. But do you feel tricked? Do you feel like you’ve been roped into supporting something and calling your senator or congressman over something that isn’t gonna happen, that doesn’t stand a prayer of happening? And when it doesn’t happen, are you going to be sad and depressed and really mad, enraged? Are you going to feel used? Are you gonna be further soured and turned off to conservatism?

‘Cause this is one of the criticisms being bandied about in Washington about Cruz is that he’s using you. I mean, this is mean. This is really mean. He’s scamming you. He’s using you. He knows full well this doesn’t have a prayer. He’s doing this for his own profile being raised, his ego, whatever, and he doesn’t have a prayer, and when this doesn’t pan out and when it doesn’t happen that you’re gonna feel used and discarded and the worst thing is, you are going to distrust conservatism after this. So I wanted to ask if that describes you. If you want to comment on it when we get to the phones, feel free.

But the real scam is being run by Dingy Harry. ‘Cause I’m not making this up. He’s forcing a vote on a bill in the Senate that has a provision in there that defunds Obamacare, and some Democrats are gonna vote for it, and then he’s gonna pull that provision. As soon as the bill’s passed there’s gonna be a revision, take it out, but then these Democrats that voted for it are gonna be able to campaign in 2014 and 2016 saying that they voted to defund Obamacare. And that’s the only reason Dingy Harry’s doing it, and yet we’re supposed to feel scammed by Ted Cruz.

As Cruz said on Wednesday, the Senate vote that Dingy Harry is orchestrating is the show vote. It’s a major scam to try to fool the low-information folks back home into thinking that there are some Democrats who want to defund Obamacare. Let me put another way. Cruz is being lambasted for exposing this scam of this Senate and its vote. That’s really why the long knives are out for Ted Cruz. He’s told everybody this is a show vote, and that’s exactly what it is, and Harry Reid is letting the Senate pretend to be voting to defund Obamacare, when everybody knows he’s gonna strip that provision out as soon as the bill’s voted for. But the Drive-Bys, ah, they’re all out there calling Ted Cruz the scammer.

The guy who is exposing the scam is the scammer. All this upcoming vote in the Senate does is let Senate Republicans and some Senate Democrats be able to tell their low-information constituents that they voted to defund Obamacare. This is a giant scam that the Senate is running on people today, at the behest of Dingy Harry. And, in fact, the vote just happened. It was 79 to 19 to invoke cloture on the House-passed continuing resolution. And they’re gonna strip now the defund Obamacare provision over 19 votes to defund Obamacare, essentially, and they’re gonna strip this out.

You wait. As Cruz said, voting for cloture was the crucial vote and it allows them to say they voted for the House continuing resolution while allowing Dingy Harry to strip the defunding provision out of it. No, no, the House CR, the continuing resolution in the House contains a provision defunding Obamacare, and that’s what the Senate voted on. It’s right in there. It’s the House continuing resolution, their version of it. And by voting for cloture, that shows they want the House continuing resolution to move forward, but as soon as it moves forward, the Obamacare defunding provision will be stripped out of the Senate version. They vote for the House version except, “Oh, wow, we just voted to defund Obamacare,” then the Senate version of the CR bill, it gets taken out. That’s how it works. Huge, huge scam. And you’re supposed to think that it’s Ted Cruz running this scam and using you. It’s fascinating. Here is Ted Cruz. This is this morning in Washington. He’s on the Senate floor.

CRUZ: When it comes to back to the Senate after the House stands their ground yet again, we will have an opportunity for Republicans to come home, for Republicans to stand together. And I very much hope next time this issue’s before this body in a few days, that all 46 Republicans are united against Obamacare and standing with the American people, that we listened to the American people the way Senate Democrats are not.

RUSH: That’s the scam, they say. Conservatives inside the Beltway say he’s just lying to you. It’s really sad, in fact, folks. You’re just the huddled masses being led down this endless path where there is no solution. There is no defunding of Obamacare. It doesn’t have a prayer. It isn’t gonna happen. Ted Cruz knows it. He’s using you. And then when you figure that out, are you gonna be sad. You’re gonna be dejected, suicidal, depressed, enraged.

You’re gonna feel like you’re nothing but pawns in the game of life, like Mongo in Blazing Saddles. You’re gonna tune outta politics, and you’re gonna hate conservatism. You’re gonna blame conservatism ’cause Cruz is a conservative, and this is what the mainstream Beltway conservatives think. And I just wonder if that accurately describes you. Do you not know what’s happening here? Are you really, really, at the end of all this, gonna be so dejected and feel like the biggest fool that’s ever been sucked into anything in your life? Tom Harkin this morning also on the Senate floor, Democrat radical senator from Iowa.


HARKIN: It’s dangerous. It’s very dangerous. I believe, Mr. President, we are at one of the most dangerous points in our history right now. Every bit as dangerous as the breakup of the Union before the Civil War.

RUSH: Whoa. Whoa ho-ho. What’s brought that on? What in the world is old dung heap talking about here? Well, that’s our affectionate nickname for him, Rachel, ’cause he talked about a dung heap one day. It alliteratively goes with Tom “Dung Heap” Harkin. It just works. It’s very dangerous. People disagreeing with Obama, is what he means. People trying to defund Obamacare. People trying to get rid of the law of the land, this is worse. This is as bad as it was during the Civil War. This is horrible. What was the Civil War about? I mean, right down to brass tacks what was it about? Well, once again, freedom, was it not? Not only, I’m not trying to say that in a Pollyannaish way, but certainly freedom was on the agenda.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, now, here is further clarification of the Senate scam if you really want to know the intimate, intricate details. In a nutshell, the cloture vote to cut off debate allows Harry Reid to get what he wants in the bill by just a 51-vote majority, and by voting for cloture the Republicans gave Reid that power. But the Republican senators say that they’re gonna then vote against Reid’s stripping of the defunding bill out of this, but the Republicans know that their vote on that’s gonna fail because the Democrats have the majority.

So everything that is happening here is for show, exactly as Senator Cruz said. Folks, the people who are screaming bloody murder at Ted Cruz for wanting to defund Obamacare just had a vote in the Senate to do that, and they’re trying to destroy the guy over his effort to really defund Obamacare. The guys that are ripping him to shreds just had a vote in the Senate to do just that, so that they can go home and say they did.

Now, the Republicans are trying to keep Dingy Harry’s feet honest, hold his feet to the fire on this by trying to vote to prevent him stripping out that defund provision from the Senate version of the House CR, but they don’t have the votes to do that. It’s all for show. I’ll tell you what makes me feel like a fool. You know, it isn’t Cruz. It’s not anything that Cruz has done. I’ll tell you what makes me feel like a fool — when I get sucked in.

It’s when I watch the Drive-By Media report on this stuff as though it’s unknown what’s gonna happen. It’s the future of the country, and they’re hand-wringing and they’re doing all this analysis and strategy of what’s going on. They’re in on it! They eat this stuff up and they act as though there’s something really unknown that might happen here. I anybody is running a scam, come on, it’s the Drive-By Media in conjunction with the White House on all of this.

That’s when I get mad. I even get mad at myself for falling into the trap of analyzing what various media here says. Like Wolf Blitzer and Gloria Borger are just now discussing this! I can’t hear it because, obviously, I’m doing the program, but they’re discussing this in the greatest of detail and what it might mean here. What it might mean? It’s all bogus. The outcome’s a foregone conclusion. We know this. Here, let me go to the phones. Jeff in Summit, New Jersey, you’re first. It’s great to have you here in Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Rush, great to be here. Let me just start by saying I don’t know if this is sufficient but all I have to say is, thank you. That is for everything you do.

RUSH: Oh, appreciate that.

CALLER: All I have is “thank you.” I think it falls short of expressing what a national treasure you are, but nonetheless that’s what I have.

RUSH: I appreciate it. I really do. Thank you very much.

CALLER: Let me comment or answer the question, if I can, on Ted Cruz, ’cause it ties into a lot of different things I wanted to say. Not only do I not feel deceived by Ted Cruz, when I look at Ted Cruz, when I listen to Ted Cruz, not only do I see a man of honesty and integrity, but I see a glimmer of hope. I see a little bit of light in the distance. Ted Cruz is a truly principled leader who clearly doesn’t care about what’s best for his political career, and he truly does care about what’s best for us.

The people I feel deceived by are the Boehners and the McConnells and the Cantors and the John Cornyns who claim that they want this to go away and yet they’re deceiving us by embracing what they know is a fatally flawed strategy — and that is sitting back and saying, “Listen, this is gonna die of its own accord.” Because, if we learn anything from watching Democrats, they don’t sit back and let anything they want die. They will make any maneuver, they will do anything they can to make sure that Obamacare doesn’t fail.

Whether it’s granting of the waivers, whether it’s not implementing certain parts of it until it’s fixed, implementing other parts — whatever it is they need to do — they will do.

RUSH: That is exactly right — and, even when it fails, what they will do is promote people who were intimately involved in botching it and make it look like it was a huge success. But there’s another good analogy, too. It’s something that we do as Republicans or conservatives that they don’t like. They don’t sit around and let us implement it and then think it’s gonna blow up. They launch every weapon and ammo they’ve got to destroy our ideas and destroy our objectives. They never sit back and let it happen under the theory it’s gonna implode or collapse. They don’t take that chance.

CALLER: Of course they don’t. They practice preemptive strategy whenever they can, and I think that this strategy is going to, very sadly, backfire. Although maybe it’s not so sad. It’s a chance to get rid of a lot of this deadwood. But this strategy is going to backfire on every Republican who says this is the way to go. They are going to be looked at as people who are not up to the task, who are not true leaders, who don’t have backbone and I can tell you anecdotes from out here in the field just being a citizen and a Republican and a conservative. All the people I talk to, they are infuriated. They have reached the exasperation point with this kind of tepid inaction.

RUSH: Well, I know. You look at the polling data, and the opposition to this law, this whole concept of socialized medicine is profound. It’s a dynamic opposition. People are actively angry about this. They actively want to do something about it. They’re not just running around in a passive way saying, “Oh, yeah, I oppose that.” I mean, they’re inspired to action by this, they oppose it so much.

CALLER: They are.

RUSH: I just wish I knew, I wish somebody could show me — maybe there is an example — of where an idea like this was allowed to implement and it was so bad that it fell apart on its own, and everybody saw how bad it was, and then the leaders and the people responsible for it were held to account. I just don’t remember that. I can’t recall that ever happening.

CALLER: No. It’s going to be the Republicans who are held to account on this, if they fail to act affirmatively. You know that, I know that, most conservatives and most voters know that. The only people who don’t seem to know it in the polls are staring them right in the face are our elected representatives.

RUSH: Well, I know. It’s a sad thing. The great point that you made is that the Democrats just don’t accept defeat. Even when they are defeated, they aren’t defeated. When they lose, it’s not structured as a loss or even treated that way. Admittedly, they’ve got the media on their side. That intimidates our guys.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And what did I tell you? It just happened. A news flash from TheHill.com. Breaking: Senate passes amendment to remove House provision defunding Obamacare from the continuing resolution 54-44. It took ’em all of five minutes to do it. He-he-he-he-he-he-he. This is what I mean, folks, when I say that you listen here and you are on the cutting edge.

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