RUSH: This is Lee in Queens. Great to have you. Hello.
CALLER: Thanks for taking the call.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I keep hearing you talk about the next two years and what’s going to happen, and my point is, it’s not the next two years, because after amnesty, Rush, I think that’s it. I think that this is the kind of government we’re gonna have for the foreseeable future. And every single major issue we have, whether it’s taxes, energy, jobs, health care, people’s pensions, people’s private property, I think everything’s up for grabs because there’s not gonna be anybody around to stop it anymore.
RUSH: Well, this is I guess my point. When I say the next two years, tell me, this will be helpful for me, tell me what you think I mean, that you’re objecting to.
CALLER: I think the focus is greater, if you look at it as the foreseeable future and not just as the end of Obama’s presidency in the next two years, I think the bigger issue is after that. I think this is it.
RUSH: And you think the linchpin for all this is amnesty. If this happens then all bets are off. That represents, if I’m hearing what you’re saying, a cultural tsunami from which we simply can’t overcome.
CALLER: Yeah. I really do.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: And I want to be wrong on that.
RUSH: Well, I don’t —
CALLER: I think you’re gonna spend the rest of your career being right about everything but unable to do anything about it.
RUSH: Yeah, well, here’s the thing. I have said the same thing. The Democrat Party needs a permanent underclass no matter where they get ’em. Your fear will be fully and ultimately realized when those people are finally given the right to vote, which is not going to take very long.
Now, all I mean, when I talk about these next two years, is that what we’ve had up ’til now in terms of Obama ignoring the Constitution is gonna pale in comparison to what he does the next two years. I had a guy — this may help me explain it better to you — I had dinner on Saturday night with an establishment news media type, and I get the usual question, “So what do you think of the Republican field in 2016, who do you think’s the front-runner right now, who excites you?”
And I said, “I don’t think that’s the story. I don’t think the Republican presidential campaign is in any way, shape, manner, or form even understood yet because you have no idea what’s coming these next two years. The Republican presidential campaign is going to be starkly different from what anybody thinks it’s going to be today because you haven’t seen anything yet in terms of what Obama does, policy-wise, violating, ignoring the Constitution, who knows what. Amnesty is just part of it.”
This guy understood what I was talking about. He doesn’t look at things like that. He’s more of a traditionalist. “Okay, it’s a presidential year, who are the Republican front-runners? Who do you think is the odds-on favorite?” And I said, “It’s too soon to narrow any of that down because that campaign, the Republican presidential campaign, is gonna be predicated and based entirely on what Obama does these next two years. I don’t think anybody has the slightest idea how bad it’s gonna be. And they won’t ’til they get there. Amnesty is the first step of many similar kind of things to follow.”
I hope I’m wrong, but the evidence is pretty clear. Obama told everybody he’s got a wish to fundamentally transform this country. Now, if you know what that means — and I know you do, Lee — if you know what that means, he’s got two years, the Republicans have told him that they’re not gonna stop him, he’s got two years to get even with 200 years of injustice, the way he looks at it, and he’s gonna use ’em to the best of his ability.
CALLER: All right. I think we’re on the same page.
RUSH: Yeah. Exactly. And amnesty is just one of the things, amnesty and endless immigration is just one of the ways Obama is going to right the wrongs that have been part of this country since our founding. This country was founded on racism, he believes, founded on injustice and inequality, and it’s time that this country found out the way most of the people in the world live. Our superpower is illegitimate because we’ve stolen it from other nations around the world. We’ve bullied, we’ve conquered, we’ve put people in jail that I don’t deserve to be, blah, blah. All of these things, and it’s his job to finally right all of these traditional injustices.
I don’t think — and I’d love to be wrong about all this — but I don’t think people have the slightest inkling yet. (interruption) Who’s gonna go tooth and nail to stop him? They’re not gonna stop him. When you take impeachment off the table, that’s the only way to stop him. Separation of powers. I talked about last week. I don’t mind repeating it. Separation of powers is one of the primarily safeguards built into the Constitution. Let me explain this a bit.
The Founders knew full well what they were dealing with. They knew full well what the natural inclinations of tyranny are. And they knew that this country was going to be attacked from the moment it was founded. They believed in what they were doing. They believed in what they were doing so much they pledged everything to make it happen, their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor. And when given the opportunity to withdraw and retract, they didn’t. They hung in.
During the Revolutionary War many of them saw their children kidnapped and killed as prisoners of war. They were blackmailed. “Recant this revolution and we’ll release your kid.” They didn’t. They were dead serious. Read the Federalist Papers. They were very proud. These were smart people. These were miraculously brilliant people. They knew exactly what they had done in creating this country. They knew exactly what they’d done when they wrote the Constitution, and they knew, human nature being what it is, that it was gonna be under assault from the moment it was enacted, so they built safeguards into it.
They built self-protective measures into it that they rooted in their understanding of human nature. And separation of powers is one of the first, and in their intentions, most powerful safeguards. What got me thinking about this was a call in the latter months of last year in discussing how Obama’s breezing past the Constitution, ignoring it wantonly, purposely, and somebody called and said, “Well, what’s stopped any leader before Obama from doing this? Why is he the first?” The caller said, “Is it the honor system? Have we just been lucky that we’ve elected people who decided, because of their own morality and all that, to honor the Constitution?”
I said, “Well, you’d like to think that, but no.” There are many safeguards built in to protect the Constitution and to make sure that it is something that remains in force. The way separation of powers is designed to work and rooted in human nature is, the Founders understood that human beings, particularly human beings who seek leadership positions in the world of politics, want power. That’s why they divvied it up. It’s why there is no king. You’ve got the judicial branch — the judges, the courts, the Supreme Court.
You have the legislative branch, which is the House and the Senate. And you have the executive branch, which is the president and all the cabinet offices. I imagine some of you listening today are hearing this for the first time, given how woeful our education is on this. The Founders believed that the legislative branch, because of human nature, would be trying to secure as much power away from the president and his branch as they could. And by vice-versa, the founders believed that presidents would be doing everything they could to steal power from the legislative branch.
Their belief was that people steeped in, invested in, desirous of power, would go to any length to hold on to theirs and thereby preserve the separation of powers and prevent any one branch from becoming essentially dictatorial. They believed that the president would do everything he could to keep Congress from overrunning him and vice-versa, that Congress would do everything it could to stop some president from taking over their power.
Well, what’s happened here in the last six years is that the Democrat Party, particularly those in the House of Representatives, as exemplified by these idiots, Barbara Lee and Sheila Jackson Lee, and any number of others who said, “Our job is to write executive orders for the president.” These are the kind of people the Founders feared. Democrats in the House and Senate have been more than willing to surrender their power to Barack Obama in the name of the cause. And the cause is liberalism. The cause is statism. The cause is power, party power.
So the president has been allowed to usurp all of this congressional power because Congress has not fought to protect their own. The Democrats didn’t care. It’s all the Democrats saying, “Obama’s Democrat, we’re Democrat, if he’s got the power, we’ve got the power, we don’t care where it is.” The Republicans — this is why everybody’s so upset. The Republicans didn’t really fight to preserve their power in the House because they didn’t want to be called racists by the media.
They didn’t want to be criticized as racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes, and so this natural safeguard, separation of powers, is itself under assault right now. Then the judges that the Democrats have put in office are themselves people who think they should have and do have the power to write law from their courtrooms. Now, add to that something that was never provided for in the Constitution, and that’s all of these regulatory agencies out there that are in the executive branch, such things as the Fish and Wildlife and the EPA.
These people are writing regulations left and right, 14, 15,000 a year that are becoming, effectively, law in this country without going through the process of becoming law.
That’s one of the greatest violations of the separation of powers ever. There’s no oversight over these regulators. The regulators at EPA, if they want to be in charge of regulating CO2 because they believe it destroys the climate, then, by God, they’re gonna be in charge of it. And if they want to fine you for exhaling or if they want to fine you for using more than your share, there’s nothing to stop them from doing it. Congress hasn’t even played a role in any of this, and yet none of this is technically constitutional. Everything coming out of these regulatory agencies — not everything — but the vast majority of it, in real terms, is not constitutional.
But if the people who are having power taken from them do not stand up and defend it and try to secure their own power and make sure that it isn’t stolen, then the separation of powers kind of drifts away, loses some of its unique strength or power itself. And so it’s now left to other safeguards, and other safeguards, if you read the Federalist Papers, it’s why Madison spent so damn much time talking about the importance of character in the chief executive, character in elected leaders, morality and character, all the things that are laughed at today by people that are uninformed and all this stuff in the pop culture.
But that’s why so many people are concerned. The safeguards have worked for over 200 years to protect and defend the Constitution and keep it from being basically used as toilet paper, and now it’s under assault and there doesn’t seem to be anybody standing up and defending it. That’s what really upsets so many people when you get down to it. It upsets the Tea Party.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, there’s one other thing here. In addition to the separation of powers, I think you’re gonna laugh at this, but one of the most powerful things that keeps presidents in check is the fear of impeachment. Do not doubt me. The fear of being impeached, even after Clinton — doesn’t matter. It’s not really the fear, but the idea that people don’t want to be impeached, what it does to the legacy, the image and all that. It’s the only way, when you get right down to it, the only legal way to stop a president who’s running amok. It’s the only legal mechanism built in, impeachment.
Separation of powers, in and of itself, is not enough. It’s just a safeguard. But impeachment was established and built in as a legal remedy to a runaway chief executive. Now, the case for impeachment is not legal, except at the very end of it. In order for there to even be the first steps taken to impeach, the political will must exist in the country. If you haven’t done that, if you’re the opposing party and you do think that impeachment’s warranted, if you haven’t established the political will to do it, don’t waste your time. Because while it is a legal remedy, it’s a political procedure when it kicks off.
It doesn’t matter, it’s moot anyway, because the Republicans, in an effort to show how cooperative they can be and non-confrontational and how they want to really work with the president and get things done, announced a long time ago that impeachment is off the table, it will never happen. But if you tell John Gotti that you are going to stop chasing the mob, what do you think John Gotti is going to do? Or take Willie Sutton, I don’t care, use any analogy you want.