RUSH: Here’s Dan in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome.
CALLER: Thank you. It’s an honor, Mr. Rushbo. I’ve been really wanting to call and talk about this matter. Well, what I really have a big beef with about the whole legal immigration issue is I’ve served two times in Afghanistan and I really had a real respect for my local translators and interpreters. All these guys really wanted to do is earn the right to be called themselves Americans.
They’d fight day in and day out. While we were doing one-year tours, they’re there for the full 10 years, and a lot of them are actually coming over here to the United States now because of, you know, their safety, and they’ve earned that right. So it’s sickening to me that all these people that come here illegally are really getting a cut in the line. They’ll be able to become citizens and have done nothing to earn it.
RUSH: Oh, yes, they have.
CALLER: (laughing) How’s that, Mr. Limbaugh?
RUSH: Yes, they have. You think the lawbreakers…? I’m sorry. You think the line cutters, you think the people here illegally haven’t done anything to earn it? My God, look at how some of them spent 45 days on a train from Central America, without their parents — and then what do they do? They promise to come here and immediately vote Democrat. That’s the assumption. They are valuable. They are going to become members of the permanent underclass of this country, which the Democrat Party desperately needs. That is their contribution.
CALLER: It’s so sad ’cause these guys, not only do they serve with us, but a lot of them don’t make it over here. They die. Their families are constantly in danger. They lie to their family about what their doing to make money.
RUSH: The larger point here that he’s making is you have all kinds of people, quality people — and I don’t mean to be saying anything untoward about those that are in the shadows, but we have educated, quality people that really want to become Americans. They really want to be American citizens. They want to buy into it, and many of them learn the oath that they have to take at their naturalization ceremony before they get there.
I’ve known a couple. I knew a couple people that were gonna be naturalized, and what happens is at the ceremony they’re given an oath, and it’s a “repeat after me” kind of thing, like the presidential oaths or any other oath. They knew it. They were so excited, they knew the oath — they could recite it from memory — because it meant so much to them. Those people are the ones that are in line and getting in at a trickle rate.
And they do. They see all over the country this mass migration, and after a certain number of years, the political class throws up its hands in supposedly futility and says, “Well, we may as well get ’em out of the shadows here. They’re here anyway, and they’ve been paying taxes and whatever other things that makes them valorous. So we must get ’em citizenship. We gotta!” They serve two purposes.
Either they’re gonna be cheap labor, or they’re gonna vote Democrat. I mean, that’s the thought, and the Republicans think they might have a chance of getting them as voters, too. Speaking of all this, grab audio sound bites six and seven. Last night on Greta Van Susteren’s show on the Fox News Channel, it’s called On the Record With Greta Van Susteren. She has an eponymous show, by the way.
She said to McConnell, “How do you have no government shutdown if you and the president are deeply divided on any particular issue? How do we as a nation avoid that?” Greta, what are you doing to me? You know better than this. But, see, she’s feeding right into, “Oh, my God, Senator McConnell! How do you have no government shutdown if you and the president don’t disagree? Oh, my God, how do we as a nation avoid a government shut? Oh, no!” So McConnell’s set up, and here’s what he said…
MCCONNELL: You pass each bill that funds the government separately, and in those bills, if you object to bureaucratic regulations of one kind or another or presidential actions of one kind or another, you literally write into the spending bill restrictions. But if you do each bill separately, you take away from the president the argument that you’re shutting down the government. He may veto the bill, but if he does it doesn’t have cataclysmic impact all across the entire government.
RUSH: Neither does so-called shutting it down. Okay, here we go. So if you do each bill separately, you take away from the president the argument that you’re shutting down the government. So here is this rampant fear again rearing its head. You take a look at the 2010 elections where the Democrats got shellacked. They lost 700 seats all across the ballot from Washington down to local races.
In 2012, they would have lost the presidency except for four million Republicans decided to stay home and not vote. In 2014, the Democrats got shellacked again. It is so bad for the Democrats that you got Tom Harkin and Chuck-U Schumer now publicly admitting Obamacare was a mistake. Henry “Nostrilitis” Waxman is quitting. The Democrats lost control of the Senate.
The Democrat Party, I maintain to you, is in a state of disarray that could be exploited if the Republicans had the ability to think and act like winners. Stop and think of what’s happened here. Yeah, Obama’s there in the White House — and, yeah, he’s doing executive orders, and, yeah, I know, pop culture is left, and I know that they’re continuing to do drastic damage to our country. I know all that’s happening. But in the world of politics the Democrat Party is in a world of hurt.
Mary Landrieu’s gonna get creamed by 24 points. There’s not gonna be a single Southern Democrat in the Senate. She gonna get wiped out this Saturday in that runoff election with Cassidy. They’re getting shellacked everywhere no matter how you look at it across the board. Politically, electorally they’re losing left and right, other than in their bastions of New York and San Francisco and places like that.
As far as issues are concerned, the Republicans that won election this year all ran against Obamacare. The Republican Party nationally said nothing. This was a total rejection of the Democrat Party. And in the midst of all that, we have people saying that they can’t stop Obama ’cause he might accuse us of shutting down the government. “Oh, my God, what will they say about us? (crying)”
It doesn’t make any sense!
The Democrat Party’s not on the ropes; they’re on the canvas. And in the midst of all of this, the Republican Party is acting frightened that the president might accuse them of a government shutdown, which happened exactly one year ago. They did it again. They accused Republicans of shutting down the government. It was so bad! My God, you remember, folks. My God!
It was so bad, the Republicans won in a landslide election 10 months later, just a month ago. That’s how bad it was. Just in a purely intellectual sense, this makes no sense whatsoever, this fear. I am convinced this government shutdown thing is simply an excuse, because the Republicans — for whatever reason — don’t want to stop Obama on immigration. We know that’s the case, because Trent Lott was just at the Christian Science Monitor blaming me for getting you all riled up and stopping it in 2007.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but Mitt Romney on Monday said Republicans should just swallow hard and go all-in for total amnesty, comprehensive immigration reform. Not this chump change five million. Just do it for all of ’em! Beat Obama to the punch. Jeb Bush wants to run for the presidency on the basis of the same thing, comprehensive immigration.
We got enough evidence to suggest the Republican establishment is also in favor of comprehensive immigration reform/amnesty, whatever. And over here, why, that government shutdown thing? That’s a really cool thing to hide behind. “No, Mr. Limbaugh, you don’t understand. You’re not in politics, sir. We understand that. You’re not in politics. But we’ve got polling data!
“The American people don’t want their government shutdown, Mr. Limbaugh — and if it happens, they’re gonna blame us.” Well, he may not understand the business of politics, but I do know a little bit about connecting with an audience and connecting with voters — and I’m telling you, that’s not happening here. This government shutdown is just too common. It comes up every year.
Isn’t it amazing how often this comes up? Four times a year, government shutdown — and every time it comes up, it’s the reason Republicans can’t stop Obama or the Democrats. “Yeah, polling data says that. Yeah, we’d get blamed for it — and, you know, people love their government, Mr. Limbaugh, and they don’t really don’t like it shut down.” Yeah? Really? I’d venture to say 95% don’t even know when it happens.
Okay, the government shutdown last year, last December. Think back, folks. Think hard. Think long. Think deep. How did it affect you? What happened to you? Did your welfare check stop coming? No. Did your Social Security check stop coming? No. Did you have Christmas? Yes. Were you able to watch The Wire if you wanted to? Yes. Were you able to play whatever your video game favorite is? Yes.
Did you have New Year’s Eve? Yes. Were you able to put gasoline in your car and go where you wanted to go? Yes. Did you have a job? No, but that was before the government shutdown. What happened? In the government shutdown, the only people that could probably remember what happened was the World War II vets who had spent a long time saving for a trip to their memorial in Washington, and President Obama told ’em they couldn’t visit.
He turned the space over to a rally for pro-illegal immigrant activists while the World War II vets couldn’t show. Outside of that, can you any of you tell me what the government shutdown did to you? (interruption) I know the media was running around screaming. They had their man-on-the-street camera teams, microphones jammed in people’s faces. “How’s the government shutdown affecting you?”
“What? What? How’s what affecting me? The government shutdown? Well, I don’t know, but I think it’s bad.” “See? Republicans suck,” is how it works. It’s just an excuse.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Bruce in Melbourne, Florida. Bruce, it’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, thank you for taking my call and Happy Holidays. Listen, I’m one of your listeners who does support a government shutdown. I really do feel the will of the people is not reflected in these current polls. When you’re coming up against extreme measures that are being done by this current administration and just the inactivity of Congress, you really need to kind of counterbalance with an extreme (supposedly) unpalatable action like the government shutdown.
I base this on five reasons, and you sort of previously alluded to them in one of your segments what they are. The first one is all the entitlements did go out. The government employees were paid their salaries. Critical services were still available — nobody died, nobody was maimed — and the most important thing is, we found that we elected officials such as Ted Cruz and the Lees and Gohmerts out there who stood by their platform that they would do anything necessary to really retard bad legislation, bad executive orders.
They’ve done that, and I think that infuriates the Mitch McConnells and the Boehners and the Karl Roves out there. What I do hope is that this current batch of newly elected congressmen will really yield to what their constituents have voted them in based on saying they would do what it takes to stop Obama.
RUSH: That is the thing. Let me just stop you here because you’re right on the money, I think. The point, when you get right down to it, a government shutdown, the people that elected Republicans are for it if that’s the only thing available to stop Obama. And, by the way, we’re not even talking shutting down the government. The government does not get shut down, as he just illustrated.
There’s back pay for people that are sent home (which is very few) and christmas turkeys for those that don’t get ’em. There’s retroactive back pay. The welfare checks go out. It’s not even a shutdown. People voted in this last election to stop the implementation of any more of the Obama agenda, and if the only way to do it is to defund it and they want to call that a government shutdown, most people support it.
But then the Washington Post trots out this poll that shows that 53% of people would blame the Republicans for a government shutdown and that 74% oppose a government shutdown. Well, if you just ask a dryball question, “Do you favor shutting down the government or leaving it open?” what the hell are people gonna say? You know, this whole shutting down the government thing has come to mean something that is not even practical in terms of what really happens.
It’s not realistic.
But I agree with you; I don’t think most people would have a problem with it. We shut down the government in 1995. The government shuts down more often than you would realize. I think I read the government shutdown last year that everybody was so hot to trot about was actually a 15% shutdown. That is what happened, 15%, and Obama was in charge of it. White House tours, he closed them.
Secret Service was still fully staffed. They could have done ’em. He closed the World War II Memorial to World War II vets and opened it to pro-illegal immigration activists in a thumb-in-the-eye move. It really is fascinating, because I think it’s a diversion anyway. I think it’s an excuse, it’s a diversion, it’s a trick, this whole government shutdown thing. But I appreciate the call.