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RUSH: I just want to jog your memory a little bit. You remember how the Democrats went all the way back to the time Mitt Romney was at Bain Capital, and they were ripping Romney as a friend of the rich and a guy who didn’t care about the poor and ripping his time at Bain Capital? Let me just tell you: Bill Clinton’s scandals in the nineties are a lot more recent than Romney’s activities at Bain.

Romney stepped down from Bain Capital in 1994. The Clinton-Lewinsky stuff is 1997. So it’s permissible go all the way back to Bain Capital and rip Romney to shreds. Do whatever you want. Go back in time, rip Palin, that doesn’t matter. But you can’t rip Obama, can’t rip Jeremiah Wright, can’t rip Monica Lewinsky, can’t rip the Clintons. Not according to the Republican establishment. But Clinton’s sex scandals are a lot more recent than Romney’s evil activities at Bain Capital.

And they weren’t evil, by the way, and there were no scandals at Bain Capital. Nevertheless, it was all portrayed just as fact that Romney was at Bain, that he co-founded it, and that was a scandal in and of itself. Tea Party super PACs, by the way, raised three times the money of the GOP super PACs last year, and that scares the establishment. Tea Party super PACs. That’s why they also want the IRS investigating the Tea Party. The Tea Party’s out-raising the GOP, super PAC-wise.

Charlie Cook, noted political handicapper, has a piece in his thing, The Cook Report: “Is Hillary Clinton Too Old?”


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RUSH: That’s right. That’s right. The left went all the way back to Romney’s days in prep school, remember? He supposedly cut a kid’s hair because he hated him. By the way, Romney said over the weekend — and the media’s trumpeting this — that the Lewinsky scandal has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. We ought to not go there. We ought to focus on Hillary’s time in government with Obama as secretary of state. We need not go back to the Lewinsky scandal, because she had nothing to do with it.

Well, Diane Blair, remember her? The late Diane Blair kept a journal. It was released last week, or the week before last, and Diane Blair, in that journal, said that Hillary blamed herself for the Lewinsky scandal, because she wasn’t a good enough wife to Bill. What a crock is that? That’s what was in Diane Blair’s journal. Hillary was handling the “bimbo eruptions.” Kathleen Willey, who was harassed by Clinton, is out saying that Hillary Clinton is the War on Women — and she’s got a point.

Charlie Cook, who is one of the deans of handicapping elections in Washington, has a thing that you can subscribe to called The Cook Report, and it has all the predictions and polling data and handicapping, and you pay for Charlie’s analysis. Here’s the latest issue of the Cook Report at the NationalJournal.com website: “Is Hillary Clinton Too Old to Run? — Entering a presidential race is effectively a nine-year commitment. One year to run, and then another eight if she runs for reelection and wins.”

He’s the first of the mainstream guys to bring this up. We, of course — I — did it in my own inimitable way some years ago asking a very mature and relevant open-ended question. I asked the question without knowing or providing the answer. We put a picture of Mrs. Clinton up at RushLimbaugh.com and we simply asked, “Do the American people want to observe the aging of this woman in office?”


We put a picture up there.

We left it open-ended. But now here comes Charlie Cook, and he basically says she’s just too old to run. He points out that she will be as old as Reagan when he was elected, and they talked about Reagan and early onset Alzheimer’s that nobody knew about while he was president. Mrs. Clinton has had her own problems with memory. She testified grand juries about the Rose Law Firm billing records and a number of things, and we immortalized it in parody.

(playing of parody)

RUSH: From the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites we immortalize Mrs. Clinton’s early onset memory problems there. That’s Charlie Cook’s got it out in the open. Is she too old to run?

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RUSH: Here is Steve in Daytona, Florida. Steve, I’m glad you waited. Great to have you on the program, sir.

CALLER: Hey. Thank you very much for taking my call, Rush. I appreciate all you do to keep us peons in the game here. Hey, you know, one thing you forgot to mention when you were talking about how far the Democrats like to reach to find items they can bring up against potential candidates is how far they went back for George Bush’s DWI.

RUSH: Oh, hell. You’re right. But not just that. Do you remember back in 1992, they accused George H. W. Bush of getting on an HR 71 and flying to Paris and negotiating with the Iranians to keep our hostages in hostage.

CALLER: Absolutely. You know, it’s not what really happens; it’s what they think might happen.

RUSH: It’s the seriousness of the charge, not the nature of the evidence.


CALLER: There you go. But, you know, here’s the deal. The Republicans either need to go for the throats and get it over with or get out of the game.

RUSH: Steve —

CALLER: I mean, you know, enough’s enough.

RUSH: No, no. Steve, it’s now clear what’s happening. Folks, there is no conservative movement inside the Beltway. The conservative movement is everywhere throughout the rest of the country. But there is no conservative movement in Washington. There’s no conservative movement in the media. There isn’t any conservative movement in the Republican Party. The closest that you would come would be The Heritage Foundation. Hillsdale College has a satellite office there, FreedomWorks, but they’re really not of Washington. They got an office there, but they do their work out in the grassroots.

In terms of Republican electoral politics, there is no conservative movement inside Washington. Therefore there’s no conservative impetus in the consultant class, in the political class, in the elected establishment class. What there is, is quite the opposite. There is an effort to undermine the conservative movement inside the Beltway. That’s what Caddell is saying here. If the Republican Party establishment is willing to side with Obama on IRS investigations of the Tea Party, the meaning is pretty clear. They do not want the Tea Party to have anything to do with the Republican — and they really would prefer to lose rather than win with the Tea Party claiming credit, any part of the credit.


If the Republican Party wins because of the Tea Party, not good. And if you doubt me, let’s go back to 2010, the midterms. A clear Tea Party landslide. You know as well as I do that the Republican Party made no effort to connect with the Tea Party at that time. It was a made-to-order connection. Here you had average, ordinary Americans getting involved in politics for the first time in an organized way, and they were so successful. What were they opposed to: Obamacare and the debt. They were opposed to the Democrat Party. And they simply stood up and said, “No more” and delivered one of the biggest landslide defeats for the Democrat Party in our lifetimes. And the Republican didn’t move an inch in their direction.

Now, there are some Tea Party members in the House and Senate, and even before they were called Tea Party people, they were there, conservatives, but look how they’re marginalized by the establishment. So it’s clear to me the establishment Republicans would just as soon lose a couple of elections if that meant getting rid of the Tea Party. Now, you’re probably saying, “Why, Rush, why?” The Republican establishment is really no different than the Democrats in terms of wanting there to be a Big Government. That’s what Washington is, Big Government.

Everybody that works there wants to control it. Everybody there wants the power of being in charge of the Big Government. The people that want to reduce the role of government, they’re the enemy. It doesn’t matter if they’re Democrats, if they’re Republicans, if they’re Martians, they’re the enemy. It’s all about money and controlling it, being in charge of it. Nobody wants it to get smaller there. Nobody there wants it to get smaller. They want to run it. They’ll trade winning elections back and forth, the party establishments will.

However, the thing that remains the enigma to me is the Republican establishment doesn’t seem to get that the Democrat Party establishment does not want to coexist with them. They don’t want to share stewardship of Big Government, election to election. The Democrat establishment wants to wipe them out and on the surface it doesn’t appear the Republican establishment gets that. That’s the curious thing. Anyway, I appreciate the call, Steve, very much.

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RUSH: to Floyd, Iowa, next. This is Jennifer. Great to have you on the program.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How are you today?

RUSH: I’m well. Thank you very much.

CALLER: Good. Hey, I was just calling about the Republican Party. I feel like the head of the Republican Party, they’re Democrats. They’re telling us not to say anything critical about Hillary Clinton. I mean, that’s just what the Democrats want.

RUSH: Not only that, they’re telling us not to say anything critical about Bill Clinton.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm. Yeah. I look at that, and to me it’s like it’s just a game to them, and they should be fighting for this country. They shouldn’t worry about this game. They should worry about getting the right person to also help bring the country back to the way it was.

RUSH: Well, you know, you’ve just hit on something else that, Jennifer, is really important to note, and that is this: The Republican establishment does not think the country is in crisis, as you and I do. This level of debt, Obamacare, unemployment, economy, it’s just a cycle, like there are always cycles in the country and in politics. But there is no crisis. The country, as founded, is not threatened. That’s kook talk, they think. They really do. That is, I think, one of the most important points to make in illustrating the difference.

There is no crisis. There is no need to save the country. The country is not threatened as founded. That’s silly talk, they think. Now, you and I look at this entirely different. We think there is an assault on the country by the Democrat Party and by the worldwide left. We think there is an existential threat to our children and grandchildren, that the American dream for them is getting harder and harder and harder — and that it’s being done on purpose. The Republican establishment don’t even want to consider that.

They don’t even want to go there. That, to them, is embarrassing kook talk. So to sign on with that, to agree with that is to be compared to the kooks who believe it. So there’s not even really any common ground there. Now, as to the criticism of the Clintons, it really shouldn’t surprise anybody that this is the Republican view. They don’t want there to be any criticism of Obama. There are two reasons why they don’t want Hillary being criticized.


Well, there are more than two. The two basic reasons are Hillary’s a woman, and the Republicans are in the middle of being accused of running a War on Women. So any criticism of Hillary feeds into the idea that Republicans hate women. So they don’t even want to go there. The second reason is that they look at the criticism of the Clintons in the nineties as unsuccessful — in fact, not only unsuccessful, they think that it hurt.

They think the never-ending criticism of the Clintons and harping on Lewinsky and impeachment actually damaged the Republican Party, and they just don’t want to revisit it. There are smaller reasons, in addition to those two big ones. But “the War on Women” and “it didn’t work last time” are two of the big ones. Maybe a third reason that’s equally as relevant is along the lines of the War on Women: First woman president, perhaps, potentially.

They just don’t want to go there. They don’t want to do that kind of criticism. They don’t want to have to defend people that do it. I’m telling you, they believe this. Don’t doubt me. They believe this notion that’s been put out there by the media and so forth that independents don’t like criticism of any Democrat, the independents. “If you start criticizing Democrats, be it Obama or Hillary or Bill, the independents are gonna leave you in droves.

“The independents want us to work together. They don’t want all of this partisanship.” The Republican Party, I’m convinced, actually believe that. (interruption) Recent history. (interruption) No. Snerdley just said, “Well, they got their way with…” No. They think Obama won because people like us were being too critical of him. If we’d have just stayed away from Jeremiah Wright and all that stuff, then Obama might have been beaten.

But, no, we had to go make it personal. The independents didn’t like that. They blamed the whole party for it. I guarantee you, they think that. Now, the Hillary candidacy. You know, I’m gonna remind you of this: I have been wrong every time I have predicted Mrs. Clinton’s future movements. You know, I’m a student of the women’s movement when walking behind it, and that’s how I’ve observed Mrs. Clinton.

Every time I have predicted she wouldn’t run, I’ve been wrong. I didn’t think she would run for New York City Senator, and she did. That’s really the only time I thought that, and there might have been a second time. But I’m right back to I don’t think she’s gonna run in 2016, and I’ll go further. Even if I’m wrong again, and if she does run, I don’t know of any front-runner who has actually won anything in a long, long time, and she is the presumptive front-runner right now.

Then you have Charlie Cook doing a story, you know, she’s too old. She’s gonna be too old in 2016. What he’s not saying… (interruption) What does her age matter? Well, gosh, don’t make me say this, folks, but nobody had a problem with Reagan’s age. She’d be just as old as Reagan when he ran. Charlie Cook himself says here, “If Hillary is elected, she’ll be as old as Reagan was in his first term.” Well, nobody holds that against Reagan, even now. So why we holding it against Hillary?

What does it matter she’d be as old as Reagan? If it wasn’t a problem for the country when Reagan was elected, his age, why would it be for Hillary? (interruption) Well, it is physical. It has to do with appearances. We are who we are. And, look, folks, connect the dots yourself. You know, there’s no need to state it here. (interruption) What is the only difference in Hillary Clinton at 70 and Ronald Reagan at 70? (interruption) You’re saying that Botox and plastic surgery can overcome this? (interruption)

Okay. (interruption) Okay, then it’s not a problem. Then you’re saying that Charlie Cook is wrong? She not gonna look old because of Botox, the John Kerry treatment, and other kinds of…? (interruption) Okay, then if they can make Hillary not look her age, is what you’re saying? (interruption) That’s gotta be what Cook’s talking about. “What is this, too old? Reagan wasn’t too old. Why is she too old?” It’s gotta be something else.

But there’s another factor to this, and right here it is in the National Journal. I don’t know who the author of the piece is. This is where Ron Fournier writes. Maybe it’s him. It doesn’t say. “Is Hillary Clinton Blocking a New Generation of Democratic Leaders?” In other words, these stories are already here in the media. You got Charlie Cook saying she too old, and now here’s the National Journal asking, is she “blocking a new generation”?

In other words, there are some Democrats in the media starting to say, “Wait a minute. Okay, we have given her her chance. She ran in 2008. That was her chance for payback, where we paid her back for all of the excrement sandwiches she ate during the Clinton years around this and the White House and all that. Are we gonna do it again? Are we gonna go out of our way to make sure this woman gets to be president just so she gets paid back for what she did for us all those years ago?”


In the meantime, when you go back to the Democrat convention, they had that young mayor from San Antonio, he and his brother. Ah, what’s the name? I’m having a mental block on the name. His mother is a huge community organizer activist there. But they didn’t have, other than that guy and his brother, the mayor of San Antonio, and they — (interruption) Julian Castro, that’s right, and his mother’s Rosie, and she’s like a godfatherette. You don’t want to… So, other than that, they didn’t have any young people in their convention. They didn’t have a bench. But there are some people in that party, I guarantee you, who are even now quietly buzzing, “Are you kidding me? We’ve gotta put up with another presidential run by Hillary? Can’t we move on?” There are gonna be some Democrats — remember, when it comes to primary elections in politics, the unity kind of gets thrown away. The battle between Hillary and Obama, for example.

There are going to be some Democrats who are gonna think, “Hey, look, it’s our turn. It’s our turn to shine. We’re younger. We’re the future. We don’t want these old, decrepit grave robber funeral crashers. We don’t want these people continually running the party.” And on the other side of that you’re gonna have Bill Clinton reading the riot act to them and telling them what will not be their future unless they get in line behind her. So it’s gonna be fascinating to watch, ’cause Clinton wants back in there as much as she does, if not more. But, I mean, they both do. But in Mrs. Clinton’s case, there’s this huge item on the resume not yet done, POTUS. And as far as she and Bill are concerned, the job has been hers since 2000. When he left, she was next up.

Now, not that year, but this deal in the Democrat Party that Hillary is owed big time for what she’s done. If she hadn’t behaved the way she did, if she hadn’t remained supportive, who knows what would have happened to Clinton. She gave up her own life to advance his. So it’s been payback time ever since she left Wellesley and went to Arkansas. And now supposedly 2016, finally, is when Hillary gets to dot the I, cross the T on her resume. But there’s gonna be some younger people in the party who are gonna say, “Why do we have to put up with this?” The same old people that say, “Are we always gonna have either a Clinton or Bush?” with the occasional asterisk like Obama. So now you’ve got the story: “Is Hillary Clinton Blocking a New Generation of Democratic Leaders?” Charlie Cook: “Hillary is gonna be too old in 2016.” I’m just telling you, the ripples, the ripples are beginning in the Democrat side of things.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, I need to explain this. I just checked the e-mail. “Rush, why don’t you know who writes these stories you’re talking about?” There’s a reason. The Mac OS X has a feature on their Internet browser that’s called Reader. If you click on it, it strips everything but the text out of a Web page. All the ads, all-everything, just the text, but it does not, for some reason, print the name of the writer. It prints the link and the text body of the story, but it leaves out the byline. I do not know why. If I do not make a written note or if I don’t make a specific effort to copy and paste that line with the writer’s name, then it doesn’t print. That’s why. So if it doesn’t say here who wrote it, it means I can’t remember it and I didn’t make a note of it.

The second thing, the National Journal story on Mrs. Clinton actually is about the fact that there aren’t any young Democrats, that the Clintons have frozen them out, that there is no bench. That this Hillary inevitability is keeping the Democrats from coming up with a group of potential young candidates. That they all think they don’t have a prayer because the power structure has rigged the game that it’s gonna be Hillary come hell or high water in 2016, and nobody is gonna waste their chance. And that’s basically what the story’s about. The worry in the story is she’s too old. What if she loses? The Democrats got nothing, other than Biden, big whoop.

But they do have a bench. They’ve got that Castro guy, the mayor of San Antonio, and there are some people there. You know they do, they got some young people that want it, you just don’t know about them because the Clintons, as Kathleen Willey said, the Clintons take all the oxygen. They use it all up.

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