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RUSH: Okay, now, I mentioned to you that Nancy Pelosi had offered to help the Republicans choose their next Speaker, right? And now you’re telling me that Harry Reid has endorsed Paul Ryan? Did you see that? Harry Reid’s endorsed Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan says (paraphrasing), “I’ll do it, but I have to be unanimously elected. I am not traveling on weekends, I stay with my family. And you gotta get rid of that provision that Thomas Jefferson wrote that can recall the Speaker. If you do all that, I might think about doing it.” And the Democrats are right along line with this.


Now, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t Paul Ryan the guy the Democrats accused of pushing a wheelchair-bound granny over the cliff? And now they’re deciding that’s the guy they want to be the Republican Speaker? What does that tell us all?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No, I like Paul Ryan. This is the problem with this. You get to know these people. You know where I first met Paul Ryan? (interruption) No, it was at Bill Bennett and Jack Kemp’s thing, Empower America. This is way, way back in the early, mid-nineties, and he was there as almost an intern working for Bennett and Jack Kemp at Empower America. I was in Washington for… I think it was a birthday party. It might have been a Bennett birthday party or something.

I met Bennett at the airport and went to his office, had to pick some stuff up on the way to where we were going, and that’s where I met Paul Ryan. And I didn’t remember. He reminded me of that some years later. There were a lot of people in there that I met. And I’ve gotten to know him, more casually than anything; not talk-to-him-every-day kind of friend. But these kinds of things, when you get to know these people, becomes tough. Here he is running for speaker of the House, but some of the demands that he’s put forth…

I guess if you’re in a position where a lot of people want you and you’re not crazy about it and you’re gonna put forth a list of demands. “Okay, if you want me to do this, here’s what it’s gonna be.” But these demands? Unanimous vote by the Republican caucus? He won’t do it if somebody votes against him. He is demanding… The very reason this is all happening is that there’s a provision in the House rules to recall the speaker, essentially. And it was used by the House conservative Republicans.

He wants that eliminated so that that can’t be used to get rid of him, but he does not want to have to tell anybody what the agenda’s gonna be beforehand. So what are we to do with this? I mean, we also have to take note that Harry Reid very happy about it, has endorsed him. I’m sorry, that makes me nervous. So I’m not interested in bipartisanship and crossing the aisle with these people. I don’t happen to believe that’s the future. The future’s defeating these people, not working with them. We have tried working with them, and they’re not interested. And they’re not worth it anyway.


These people, for seven years, have engaged in policy after policy after policy that is fundamentally destroying this nation as founded. Why in the world compromise with these people? The idea that they want to compromise with us is bogus anyway. And then you add to it that Paul Ryan has publicly stated his support for comprehensive immigration reform, which includes amnesty. So it becomes problematic. And now you look at the Conservative Caucus in the House, led by Jim Jordan. I saw him on TV today.

He would not answer, “So what are you gonna do? Are you gonna say ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”

“Well, we’re gonna have a conversation Mr. Ryan later today and I’ll get back to you after we do that.”

I’m thinking, these guys can’t buckle on this. They wouldn’t buckle on this, would they? On all these things? We don’t know. We don’t know until any of this happens. Remember the debate, the vice presidential debate, Biden and Paul Ryan in 2012? Well, these are things we just can’t pretend didn’t happen. So Paul Ryan’s a great guy. He’s a good guy. Just, you know, an excellent family man. His value base is impeccable in terms of the character and morality. But so many of these Republicans have been what I think effectively as poisoned by the inside-the-Beltway mode of thinking.

Which is, “It’s the establishment versus everybody else in the country,” and it seems so out of step, the establishment does, with the rest of the country. And the Republicans particularly seem to be hell-bent on this idea that their only hope for winning anything is to openly cooperate with the Democrats and to be seen as openly cooperating, because what that means is they really believe the American people are blaming them for everything that’s gone on in the last seven years — and their fingerprints aren’t on anything, sadly.

We’d like to see some Republican fingerprints on legitimate opposition to some of this stuff, but we don’t even have that. So it’s a combination of, “Gosh, the media is gonna kill us! They’re gonna call us racists. They’re gonna War on Women us and all of this stuff,” and that’s how we get to, “You know, we can’t criticize Obama! We can’t have a government shutdown! We can’t do anything, ’cause media’s gonna blame us. The independents are gonna leave us in droves,” and I just don’t understand why they continue to fall for this.

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