RUSH: The opining over whether or not the Republicans ought to, quote, unquote, shut down the government again is heating up, this time in the Washington Post. Now, the Washington Post has the Republican Party’s best interests in mind, right? The Washington Post and the Drive-By Media, when they tell the Republican Party what to do, they really want the Republican Party to do well, right?
When the Democrat Party, such as Chuck-U Schumer, or the Washington Post in this case, or Luis Gutierrez, when any of them tell the Republican Party, “You guys had better come out for amnesty. You had better support us on this. You had better support comprehensive immigration reform or you’re never gonna win another election.” They have the Republicans’ best interests at heart, don’t they? Of course they do.
Did the Republicans just win an election? It’s getting harder and harder to tell. As you observe things happening in Washington, it’s harder and harder to tell who won that election. The Republicans are acting like losers. They’re acting like they’re gonna continue to lose unless they continue to do what the Democrats want. It’s stunning. It’s amazing to watch this.
So here’s the Washington Post. Here’s why Republicans really shouldn’t want a government shutdown in one chart. And the chart is not the election returns. No, no, no. The chart is the latest polling data. Yes, you see, we shouldn’t shut down the government because there’s polling data that says the American people will really hate the Republicans, the guys they just elected in a landslide victory, independents and moderate voters as well as Republican voters, mandated the Republican victory.
The mandate is to stop Obama, is to stop this. There can be no other conclusion. And yet we’ve got a poll here from the Washington Post saying these same people don’t want the Republicans to do anything to actually stop Obama, including a government shutdown. And the Washington Post, we’d have to conclude, has the best interests of the Republican Party in mind, right? Now, the Republican Party didn’t follow the Democrats’ advice leading up to the 2014 midterms, and they won a huge landslide.
“Congressional Republicans are brainstorming ways to punish President Obama for unilaterally deferring deportation for millions of illegal immigrants.” That’s not what this is about, punishing President Obama. Those of us who do not want amnesty for millions has nothing to do with punishing Obama. It’s all about the country. But, you see, even Republicans inside the Beltway are going to read this story and they’re going to be obviously influenced why it, which is why it’s written the way it is.
By the way, the writer here is a guy named Scott Clement, and he begins the story, “Congressional Republicans are brainstorming ways to punish President Obama for unilaterally deferring deportation for millions of illegal immigrants. But GOP leaders seem to have ruled out a partial government shutdown a la 2013, according to The Post’s Robert Costa and Ed O’Keefe: The House GOP was still considering several possible funding bills as discussions continued, the leadership’s favored Hill response to Obama’s immigration moves, according to senior GOP aides familiar with the process — a strategy that would demonstrate the party’s defiance while avoiding the shutdown theatrics and public disapproval that plagued it last year.”
Yeah, that shutdown last year, does anybody remember that shutdown? Do you remember when the government shut down last December, folks? I mean, we were all alive, and we were all paying attention. No, I’m serious. Do you remember when… (interruption) No, no. Do you remember when Congress closed? Do you remember when the DMV was? Do you remember when you couldn’t get your welfare check? Do you remember when Social Security checks didn’t show up? Do you remember when Medicare and Medicaid weren’t working? Do you remember you couldn’t get on the sleigh ride concession out at Yellowstone Park? That’s my memory, all of that happened.
There wasn’t any government shutdown. And they’re calling it a partial shutdown now; they’re calling it a partial shutdown then. Seventeen percent of government operations were shut down. This whole notion of a government shutdown is language that is being used once again to negatively impact the Republican Party and its fortunes. I ask anyone, do you remember when the government was shut down last December? Do you remember when whatever you need from government wasn’t available? Do you remember a government office closed?
No, what you remember is the incompetence of Obamacare in that rollout. What you remember is the usual incompetence of government bureaucracies, but you don’t remember them being shut down, because they weren’t. The government was shut down in 1995. Wow, man, that really hurt us. You can still feel the impact today, can’t you? Right.
That was a real shutdown in 1995. That one lasted a couple of months and Clinton worked with the government employees union to stack the deck on that one. They ended up getting their Thanksgiving turkeys. They got their back pay. Nobody lost a dime on that government shutdown. Even the Yellowstone Park sleigh bell concession, whatever, got reimbursed for whatever it was he lost.
But I’m just asking you. I seriously want you to think back and ask yourself, do you remember, has your life been so impacted, so affected by a government shutdown that you remember every moment of it, and it was so bad that you do not ever want to experience it again? I would maintain that not a single one of you, outside of the occasional government employee, can even remember the government shutdown from last December and you can’t remember being affected by it.
If you had to face an open question today about what part of the government was shut down and what happened as a result, you are clueless. I would wager nobody can answer this question. The only thing that you can remember about it is that the Republicans shut down the government, and the next thing you remember about it is the Republicans shut down the government because they hate government and they hate everybody depending on government. That’s probably what you remember, if even you remember that. And the only reason you remember that is because that was the media template, that was the narrative.
But in terms of real life, how many of you remember the government shutdown last year? My contention to you is that nobody does. If the government shutdown last year were as dramatic and negative and punitive and destructive and all those other descriptions you can come up with, if they were all of that and more, somebody explain to me how the Republicans, who got blamed for it, won a huge landslide last month. How did this happen? The polling data a year ago is identical to what the polling data is today.
The polls say don’t you dare do it. The polls say no way. The independents are gonna hate you. The Democrats are gonna hate you. I mean, the media is gonna hate you, gonna get ripped to shreds for shutting it down, better not do it. You Republicans, every time you do it, it never, ever works. You never accomplish what you want to accomplish. You always end up getting blamed for it. It’s a hell to recover from. Right. Can anybody remember any of that from a year ago?
You may have some wonks in Washington, “Oh, yeah, man, I remember. I remember I tried to get to the congressional committee hearing on the offshore dingbat drill system that was set up for the anti-fracking forces, I remember that hearing got shut down.” But seriously. It’s just mind-boggling to me. We’re not even talking real shutdown. But before you even get there, do elections have meaning? Do elections have consequences? They used to and what just happened last month was an utter shellacking.
The Democrat Party got beat up. The Democrat Party had the floor wiped with them. The president’s approval numbers are hovering in the thirties now. The only logical interpretation of the meaning of the election is that people are not happy with the status quo, and they certainly don’t want more of it.
The only logical interpretation of the election results is that people who voted in mass landslide numbers for Republicans want all of this stopped. And, therefore, in the middle of this massive landslide election victory for the Republicans — let’s characterize it differently. In the midst of this massive landslide election loss for President Obama and the Democrats, we have a poll published by the Washington Post which says that the absolute worst thing the Republicans could do would be to shut down the government just like they did last year.
Something doesn’t work here in the logical progression. If the Republicans got so much blame for such a drastic maneuver as shutting down the government last year, how in the hell did they win anything this year? I mean, why wasn’t there hell to pay? Why wasn’t there a price to pay? By the way, along the same lines, the Republicans did not come out and support amnesty before the election, how the hell they win the election? ‘Cause the Democrats and the media were telling them and everybody else that they never had a prayer.
Remember Chuck Schumer, you guys don’t have a prayer with the Hispanic community. You’re never gonna win beans, especially not gonna win the White House again if you don’t get on board amnesty right now. Comprehensive immigration reform, if you don’t do that, you don’t have a prayer. Here come the elections, it’s a landslide loss for the guys telling us what we gotta do to win.
So now here we are, and what’s really happening is the Democrat Party, a branch office of which is the Drive-By Media, is doing everything they can to intimidate the Republicans from acting on their victory. That’s what this is. And they’re using years and years of fear of the media, fear of media polls, and fear generally. You better not act like you won. You better not do anything that’s based on your victory ’cause you’re going to be hated for it by the people that elected you. That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
You better not do anything with this with this victory. You better not stop president Obama. You better give him what he wants. You better sign on to all of this, otherwise you’re gonna pay the price and there’s gonna be hell to pay. Really? This after winning? I can understand all this if the Republicans got shellacked themselves, but that didn’t happen. So the Washington Post come out openly in this story and they say it’s not about who won the election. This is all about the polling data. It’s about the poll here, the poll there, the poll over there. And they remind the Republican Party their disapproval climbed to 74% after the government shutdown last year.
Let’s put that in perspective. It wasn’t a government shutdown. Once again, you have a poll stacked, questions structured to get the desired result. So the media runs around and asks people who don’t even know the government’s been shut down, they’re not even affected by it, and they ask them a loaded question about the government shutdown, and of course what does that mean to people? It means hell, Washington’s closed, it means nothing’s happening.
Of course that’s not what it means, but you go ask people this, particular the low-information crowd, “Oh, yeah, Republicans, did they do it? I strongly oppose.” And so the blame is set up, the poll comes out to affirm the blame, the Republicans look at the poll, “Oh, my God, we shut down the government. Oh, look, we’re getting beat. Oh, my God.” And then they think it took them a year to recover. When in fact it’s bogus from the get-go. What government shutdown? I defy anybody to tell me how it affected you, how it affected the country. We’re still here, aren’t we?
What has done more damage to the US economy, shutting down the government or Barack Obama and his policies? What has done more damage to your job prospects, shutting down the government or whatever they’re calling it, or Barack Obama’s economic policies? What has done more damage to your future job prospects, shutting down the government or Obama’s amnesty, opening the doors and the floodgates to illegal immigrants from all over Central America to come in here and take your job for much less? Who is doing more damage to you and your kids and your future, a misnamed, hard-to-find government shutdown or Barack Obama? The people that voted in November answered that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I remember two things about last year’s government shutdown, and I think both of them ended up in outrage at President Obama and the Democrats. The first thing I remember was, World War II vets finally had a memorial in Washington, and a number of them had planned a trip from all over the country to visit the memorial to them. Given their age, most likely it was going to be the only time they would ever be able to visit it.
Barack Obama shut it down.
It was his decision. It was his discretionary move to shut down the area where the World War II Memorial was, and therefore those veterans were not allowed to go. But that’s only half the story. You know who was allowed to use that area? A bunch of protesters demanding amnesty. Immigration reform groups were allowed, during the government shutdown, to access areas close to the area that World War II vets were denied.
Now, I’m here to tell you that if there was any lasting memory that held political consequence after those two events, it would have been the American people angry at Barack Obama and the Democrats for the government shutdown and the tricks they employed politically during that period of time.
Yet everybody wants to run around and assume, because of mainstream media polling data, that the Republicans always pay the price, and they never recover from it, and it’s just silly to engage in this kind of activity. It’s stupid. Nobody wants a government shutdown, and Republicans always get blamed.
They just won a landslide election! The shutdown last year, if anybody got mad, it was people being mad at Obama and the Democrats — and it was probably lasting anger as well. After the 1995 government shutdown, we only lost nine congressional seats after that shutdown. All of this is a big myth, folks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: After the government shutdown in 1995, which was a big one, I mean, that really was, the Republicans lost nine seats in the House, but picked up two seats in the Senate. Net loss of seven in the Congress. Now, that’s nothing you want to advocate for, but that’s not huge. That’s nowhere near what happened to the Democrats this time. The Democrats lost control of the Senate. They lost 12 more seats in the Senate to go with the ones they’d lost previously.
By the way, let me stress something here because Snerdley asked me during the break, “Why are you agitating for a government shutdown?” I’m not. It’s not about a government shutdown. That’s another thing. It’s a diversionary move, this whole label to describe legitimate constitutional legislative action that the executive branch can take to stop an out-of-control president is not shutting down the government. It’s a loaded term, it is an incendiary term, it is not apt, it is not a legitimate description of what happens.
Eighty-three to 85% of the government continues to operate. It is not a government shutdown. But I’m not advocating for that anyway. What everybody simply wants to happen here is the Republicans to get some gonads and act like they won this and understand what they were elected to do. They were elected to stop the policies of the Democrat Party and President Obama, plain and simple, not kick the can down the road every time they get together and promise to deal with it later. And it’s become apparent that that desire doesn’t exist.
It doesn’t look like the Republicans want to actually do what it would take to stop Obama. That’s the frustrating thing. But nobody I know, certainly not myself, is actually advocating for a, quote, unquote, government shutdown. That’s what the media is going to call it. What we’re advocating here is the Republicans stand up and avail themselves as every opportunity presents itself to stop the implementation extraconstitutionally of the Barack Obama agenda.
Betsy McCaughey is out today in the New York Post with yet another ream of examples of Obama wantonly changing Obamacare while nobody is looking in ways that he is not constitutionally empowered to do. He’s just making changes here, changes there, that affect who’s available, who qualifies, who doesn’t, what government and business must do to make health care available. It’s a never-ending list of things, that while everybody is arguing about Ferguson, more executive orders or executive actions are written and implemented, nobody finds out ’til after it’s done.
So you get sidetracked on this construct here of a government shutdown, which really isn’t a government shutdown. The things that happened a year ago were all because Obama took specific action, like closing the World War II Memorial, specifically to World War II vets but yet allowing the area to be used. I mean, this was a purposeful slap in the face, which is how Obama operates. (imitating Obama) “Oh, you gonna shut down my government on me? All right, is that what you’re gonna do? Okay, well, then take this.” While area is still functioning, it’s not shut down by virtue of what happened, he closes the World War II Memorial. He and he alone decides to shut it down, making it impossible for people to visit. And then he decided randomly to open it up for illegal immigrant activists.
He also, if you’ll recall, shut down tours of the White House, even though the Secret Service was still fully staffed. The Secret Service was still fully functioning, but he closed down the White House tours. There was no need for it. The Secret Service was fully funded. It was just done to punish people, which is how Obama and people like him behave when they don’t get their way. Poll after poll after poll shows that it is President Obama who is unpopular. Poll after poll after poll shows that it is the Democrat Party that is a little more unpopular right now than the Republican Party. It is just incredible the way real public opinion is being massaged and bent and flaked and formed here to bend to the will of the Democrats and their allies in the Drive-By Media.
But the piece de resistance is the Washington Post story telling us to ignore the election results. They don’t tell you the story. The election results don’t mean anything. The only thing that counts is our poll here. Here’s what it says. “Disapproval of Republicans grew from 63% immediately before the shutdown last year to 70% during the shutdown’s first week and 74% the following week.” Oh, my God, do you remember that? Seventy-four percent disapprove of the Republicans during the shutdown, and they don’t want to go through that again, oh, my God, no. Oh, oh, no, what’s the Chamber gonna say about us? Oh, my God, what are our big donors gonna do? They’re gonna kick our butts for being so unpopular. Oh, my God!
They come back and they win a landslide election. My contention to you is, and I asked you in the last half hour, search your memory bank, what do you remember about this shutdown? I’ll bet you remember the World War II shutdown. I’ll bet you remember the same area being opened up for illegal immigrant activists. I’ll bet you remember the White House tours. I’ll bet you Obama acting petulantly is what you remember, but you don’t remember being personally impacted. You don’t remember your life being damaged. You don’t remember being harmed beyond your ability to recover because of whatever government shutdown happened. And yet that is the story that is presented.
After the shutdown, by the way, a separate ABC/Washington Post poll found 53% saying the Republicans in Congress were mainly responsible for the shutdown. So, in the second week of the shutdown, 74% disapprove the Republicans. After the shutdown, 53% blamed the Republicans for it. And then 10 months later, the Republicans won an electoral landslide, the premise of which was to stop President Barack Obama and his implementation of his agenda, extraconstitutionally and legislatively, and the Democrat Party as well. That’s what happened.
And yet we’re being told here today the big lesson of last year is not the election, oh, no, don’t be infantile, Mr. Limbaugh. Mr. Limbaugh, this illustrates why you are not ever be going to be an accepted member of the establishment. You’re just not an advanced thinker, Mr. Limbaugh. You don’t exhibit the traits necessary to be a member of the establishment. You have to know what’s important. What’s important is the polling data. ‘Cause the polling data is what we raise money off of, and the polling data is what our consultants devise our campaigns over. And what you have to understand, Mr. Limbaugh, is that the media is able to make the public hate us, and you’re not helping, Mr. Limbaugh.
Right. There’s so much hate for the Republicans, they won in a landslide. And even if you acknowledge that the election was an anti-Democrat, anti-Obama election — which it was — the Republicans are still the guys that got the votes. If they were so hated and so despised, that wouldn’t have happened.
I don’t care how you want to look at this election, there is not a single shred of intelligent analysis or evidence anywhere that says, “Well, what the voters really want now, they want Republicans to help Obama and work with him on the implementation of his agenda. They are tired of the gridlock.” That’s why the Republicans won in a landslide, to help Obama and stop gridlock? Why didn’t they just throw the Republicans out then? Because the media’s been telling everybody that the problem is gridlock and the reason Obama’s in some trouble is because Republicans are mean and extremist Tea Party people that don’t want him to succeed and so forth.
Well, why not get rid of those guys, if that’s the correct portrayal? Why not just vote against all the Republicans, give Obama every Democrat he wants, like he had the first two years of his term, and then let’s all just sit back and enjoy our trip to utopia. Why didn’t that happen?
I’m not inside the Beltway, and I don’t know how many of you are, but it’s really fascinating to watch all this from afar and to observe the almost monolithic, for all of the brilliance that exists inside the conservative movement and all the brilliance that is said to exist in the Republican Party, to watch the monolithic political analysis, it’s stunning to me. Everybody there says, “Oh, no, we can’t shut down the government.” Why can’t one person stand up, besides Ted Cruz, why can’t somebody stand up and say, “No, we’re not even talking a government shutdown, Mr. and Miss America, ladies and gentlemen, of America, this is not even a government shutdown. That’s not what’s being discussed here.”
The reasons why things aren’t done continue to befuddle me as much as the reasons are done. Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell, grab audio sound bite number 22. I’m getting to that point I got papers scattered all over my desk, I don’t know what’s where now, so I’m lucky that an obscene profit time-out’s coming up where I can get back to some semblance here of structure at least in what’s coming.
Mitch McConnell yesterday, this is the 2014, Wall Street Journal CEO council annual meeting. This is the thing Boehner — wait a minute, now. Oh, I had a sound bite from somebody that went to this thing yesterday — I don’t remember. Anyway, McConnell’s at it, a bunch of CEOs. Many Democrats, by the way. A lot of Democrat CEOs. In fact, probably more Democrat CEOs than Republican CEOs today. And the Wall Street Journal has an annual confab for them. I guess these are the people get left out of Herbie Allen’s thing at Sun Valley every year so they do their own thing ’cause they don’t invited to the big clique’s party. And so here is what McConnell said. Now, get this.
MCCONNELL: If you look at the way the president’s reacted to what could only be described as a butt-kicking election by any objective standard… The president got crushed in this election! So I’ve been perplexed by the reaction since the election of sort of in-your-face, dramatic move to the left.
RUSH: This is the second time that Senator McConnell has told us he can’t believe what Obama’s doing. He can’t believe Obama’s moving to the left after such a huge defeat. He just can’t believe it. Why can’t he? If he really means this… That’s another story. If he really means this or he’s just saying it for consumption, we don’t really know. But if he really means it — and I have such a tough time believing he really means this, ’cause I can’t believe McConnell doesn’t get what’s going on.
But I guess it’s possible. But if it does, if it means he doesn’t know what’s going on, it’s an illustration of how our guys are stuck in a bygone era when elections mattered in this way. Elections were the people speaking. What the people thought mattered. Politicians, political parties were deferential to public opinion. Those days did exist. McConnell remembers them.
It wasn’t that long ago, this bygone era, when after an election loss like this, the losers would at least talk about the need to move to the center or even fake everybody out and do it with a couple of things. I think what’s going on here is, once again, the Republicans are relying on a force that no longer exists to do their work for them. In this case, they’re thinking that this expression of popular opinion alone will be enough to stop Obama, that Obama will see this degree of disapproval and it will shock him into stopping the things he’s doing.
Meaning the Republicans won’t have to do anything because public opinion will be enough. But that’s not the case with Obama and the Democrat Party. They view the general population with contempt. They view the general population as a bunch of dunces that are basically ignorant, don’t understand how things really work in the big show: Washington politics. “No way they could ever understand it. They don’t even know how to live their lives the right way, don’t even know how to do what’s best. That’s why we need Democrats to do that for them.”
So the opinion, the collective opinion of the general population, matters not a whit any longer.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back to the McConnell stuff. I still can’t believe this. Well, I am kind of backtracked into this whole government shutdown charade, which is what that is. Anyway, greetings, my friends, and welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. Is it in fact number 22? Is that the McConnell sound bite? Yeah, here I’ve got this, yeah.
This is Mitch McConnell. Now, he’s at the Wall Street Journal CEO council. We played a sound bite of Jeb Bush at the CEO meeting. Wall Street Journal does this thing. I think, folks, it’s for all the CEOs that don’t get invited to Herbie Allen’s big media mogul event in Sun Valley every summer.
I mean, that’s a big invite, and a lot of guys don’t get invited to that, so they do their own. It’s like guys set up a golf club. If Augusta won’t ask ’em to join, they set up their own golf club. This happens. And of course there’s a lot of Democrat CEOs in any group of CEOs. It’s not any more traditional that Big Business men are Republican or even conservative. But this is the second time Senator McConnell has alluded to this surprised view he has of President Obama. It just boggles my mind. So I want hear this again. It was yesterday in Washington at the Wall Street Journal CEO council annual meeting.
MCCONNELL: If you look at the way the president’s reacted to what could only be described as a butt-kicking election. By any objective standard the president got crushed in this election. So I’ve been perplexed by the reaction since the election of sort of in-your-face, dramatic move to the left.
RUSH: Did anybody have any expectation — this is what boggles my mind — has Obama ever triangulated and moved to the center? Is there anything about Barack Obama, has he ever moved to the right, which is the direction he’d have to go to get to the center? The thing that I guess stuns me about this is the expectation. How can you have the expectation when there’s no evidence? It’s not as though Barack Obama is a mystery. He’s been president for six years. He was a senator for a couple of days before that. He’s written a couple of books.
He’s an open book! The man is an avowed leftist. There is no other conclusion. There’s no mystery. And yet here’s the new Senate majority leader expressing, openly, in public expressing surprise that Obama hasn’t tacked to the center because he just lost big in an election. When in fact what Obama is doing — see, this is what I can’t believe people don’t see. I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe people don’t see this. I can’t believe that you and I, folks, are the only ones that see this stuff.
Obama’s got two years. He’s already demonstrated a fondness and an eagerness to govern outside the Constitution. He has demonstrated that he will happily violate the Constitution. He takes losses personally. People that don’t agree with him, he wants to rub their nose in it. He’s not gonna tack to the right in humility. There is no humility here, in Obama. He’s a narcissist. Humility is not in his vocabulary; it’s impossible.
He’s got two years left, and these two years, I’m telling you, are very scary, because he’s gonna double down and move further and further to the left, and he’s gonna dare these guys to stop him, and they are making it abundantly clear that they’re not interested in stopping him. They think that he’s gonna come stop himself. That’s what frightens me about this. They really think Obama’s gonna stop himself and move to the center ’cause he lost an election?
In Obama’s world, he didn’t lose anything. He wasn’t on the ballot. A bunch of hapless, stupid Democrats that didn’t even want him around lost the election. He didn’t even lose it. He’s not even responsible for the loss, in his world. I guarantee you when Obama gets together with Valerie Jarrett and maybe Michelle if they let her in the meeting, they sit around and they start bitching about how stupid and unappreciative the Democrats are.
And I guarantee you, he took personally the fact they didn’t want him around in their reelection campaigns. He might publicly say that he understands, but this is not the way you treat somebody who thinks as highly of himself as Obama thinks of himself. You don’t do this. You don’t cast him aside. You don’t publicly indicate that he’s bad news for you. You do not publicly indicate you don’t want Barack Obama around. And if you do, there’s gonna be a price to pay.
And now Schumer and Harkin out there saying Obamacare, worst mistake we ever made. I guarantee you in the White House, those guys have horns on their pictures, and they’re on the wall, and Josh Earnest and the boys are throwing darts at ’em. But to expect Barack Obama to stop himself, to expect Barack Obama to say, “Oh, you know what? I guess the American people don’t like my agenda. Okay, well, I better give the people what they want.” They don’t possibly really believe that, right? Can’t possibly.
That’s a bygone era in politics where losers responded to public opinion and tried to get back in the good graces of the public. Those days don’t exist anymore. Hell, not even on our side. I just had to play that again because it’s a second time. I forget what the first McConnell quote was, but it was the same thing. He expected Obama to tack to the middle after the election. I think he said this either election night or within a couple of days afterwards.
But you strip it all away, what it translates to is, they expect Obama to stop himself, that they really don’t have any interest in stopping him themselves, which is what their mandate is.