RUSH: John Boehner… (chuckles) Folks, we now know. There’s no doubt. We now know. The lid has been blown or raised. This is last night on The Golf Channel show Feherty, John Boehner guest hosting with David Feherty, who has a show on The Golf Channel. He’s an on-course reporter on CBS for golf tournaments. David Feherty said to Boehner… I want you to turn your radio up. You gotta hear this. This is gonna explain a lot to you. “Is there less partisanship today than there used to be?”
BOEHNER: Twenty years ago when, uh, we won the first Republican majority in 40 years, there was one radio talk show host that nobody’d ever heard of. Uh, there was one cable news channel that just did news. And you look at today, you’ve got hundreds of radio talk show hosts all trying to outdo themselves, right — going further right and further right and further right. Uh, you’ve got all these cable news channels, and all they do are politics, and it’s tending to either push or pull people into one of two camps.
RUSH: Okay, now, that’s the first. We’ve got two more sound bites here from Speaker Boehner. He continued with this one…
BOEHNER: If I go down to see President Obama, the right begins to wonder what I’m up to; the left begins to wonder what the president’s up to. The president’s suggested, “Hey, you think it’s too much trouble if we play golf again?” (snickers) And I have to look at him and say, “Yes!” RUSH: So Boehner can’t play golf with Obama ’cause of us. He can’t play golf because he’s afraid talk radio and Fox News are gonna wonder what he’s up to and maybe — well, I don’t know, reading his mind — think that we’re gonna say he’s selling out or that Obama’s doing whatever.
He’d love to play golf with Obama, but he can’t now because of talk radio, because 20 years ago there was just one guy nobody ever heard of (who would be me). Yeah. There was a guy… (interruption) Right. “Twenty years ago when we won the first Republican majority in 40 years, there was one radio talk show host that nobody’d ever heard of.” That talk radio host was made an honorary member of that freshman class. He spoke at the orientation. Anyway, here’s the next Boehner bite. Feherty says, “Well, at what point did you start to believe, ‘Hey, maybe I can do this?'”
BOEHNER: Some people were pushing me to run for the Senate. I decided I didn’t want to do that, and I made a decision that the rest of my career was gonna be in the US House. So the team said to me, “All right, well, the rest of your career’s gonna be in the House. What’s your goal?” I didn’t know! So I said, “Well, if you don’t shoot for the top (snickers), why shoot for anything?” So I set my goal to be Speaker.
RUSH: And there you have it. So he says his goal in Congress was to become Speaker. Now, I understand it’s an expressed career goal: “What do you want to do in the House?” But that’s kind of a slow-pitch curveball, hanging curveball. “So, what you would kind of like to do as a member of Congress?” You’d say, “Yeah, we wanted to go in there and reduce the size of government. We wanted to get rid of burdensome regulations.” It was a perfect opportunity to actually define WHAT you wanted to do in the House, and he just did.
He wanted to become Speaker, and he’s reached the goal. He’s reached the goal. Okay. So there you have it. That pretty much… You wonder what the Republicans in Congress are up to? They are deeply resentful, and they think that they’re being held prisoner. “Twenty years ago when we won the first Republican majority in 40 years, there was one radio talk show host that nobody’d ever heard of.” You might not have won that majority otherwise. I mean, it’s possible, but can’t say for sure.
“There was one cable news channel that just did news.” That was CNN, but that’s not right. CNN was doing wall-to-wall liberal politics and some occasional news at night. But CNN was wall-to-wall, just like it is now. The only reason it had an audience then is that it was the only one doing what they’re doing. So, if you listen to the Speaker of the House, their problems began precisely at the time that the new alternative conservative media came to life.
If you want to analyze it, the Speaker of the House is saying that the biggest problem they’ve got is this newly birthed 20-25 years ago conservative media. Because of that he can’t play golf with Obama — which is, I guess, where they could do some deals. And… (interruption) Well, I don’t even I don’t think he’s even talking about the audience here. I don’t even think it gets that deep. You watch.
This comment is gonna feed every liberal blog and every liberal news outlet which has accused them of being prisoners, and accused me of being the titular head of the Republican Party and all that. This is gonna confirm it. And the stories are gonna be, “House Republican Leaders Afraid of…” They’ve tried to run that story over and over again and get it to stick, but they’ve never had it admitted to by actual Republican leaders.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, for the record, I have played golf with John Boehner, down here where we live in south Florida. I haven’t time to do an extensive search, but I don’t recall ever ripping Boehner for playing golf with Obama. So I just did… I didn’t have time for a deep search, just did a brief search on this at least on my website, and we found a comment that I made about Boehner and golf from 2011 in which I said, quote:
“I’m sure he would never admit this, but I’m sure that Boehner in part relished the opportunity to go out there and just shellac Obama on the golf course.” That’s the only example we can find so far (it’s a quick search) of me talking about Boehner playing golf with Obama. Boehner’s a single-digit handicap. He’s an excellent golfer, and Obama is not. I made that comment knowing full well. I know how things work on the golf course. Everybody tries to act like the amateur, the poor player is okay.
“It’s not a big deal. Nobody thinks anything of you. Nobody remembers it after the round.” But, believe me, if you have a foursome where two or three people play pretty well and the fourth doesn’t, everybody’s embarrassed for the guy that can’t play well, including the guy who can’t play well. He tries to act like nobody notices, but everybody does, and just like anything else in life when everybody leaves the golf course, they talk about it.
“What’s up? Man, he has no game. He just can’t play.” Everybody feels good about their own game. So I was just assuming that Boehner, after playing golf with Obama, would really be feeling his oats because we’ve heard Obama can’t play and Boehner is good, has a single-digit handicap. I might have commented on whether or not I thought it was a mistake for Boehner to go play with him, but we’re gonna have to do a deeper search than that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We have just learned that I, your host, am the reason the Republican House feels trapped and unable to do what they would really like to do.
It’s all because 20 years ago we had this “talk show host nobody ever heard of” who has now spawned countless other talk shows, “each trying to outdo the other,” Boehner said, “moving far right.” Then we got Fox News over here pushing everybody far right, making compromise impossible because everybody’s being pushed into “one of two camps.” And it’s all my fault, ’cause I’m the guy nobody ever heard of 20 years ago. Actually, they all heard of me 20 years ago.
It’s 27 years ago, by the way, and they all knew who I was by the time 1994 came around. What he means by that is when I burst on the scene with this program, nobody knew who I was because I was not a networker-type guy. I had not spent a lot of time getting to know politicians in Washington. I just did my show in Sacramento. So to people like that, I did come out of nowhere. I was a guy nobody ever heard of.
But look at this. In just one half hour, look at all that is my fault! (chuckling) And I’m sure before we’re finished, that will not be all. Before this is all over, you watch: I’m gonna be blamed for whatever’s happening at Planned Parenthood — or we, in conservatism, will be blamed for what is happening in Planned Parenthood because we’re the ones telling you about it, and if we weren’t hyping it, if we weren’t talking about it, you wouldn’t know it!
You wouldn’t feel bad, and therefore everything would be better.