TODD: Let me ask you how you like the capricious lockdowns and the ever-changing rules and the picking of winners and losers that this business stays open and this one has to close. There’s a doctor — and maybe we’ll get into this in detail tomorrow — who has been a huge social media proponent of lockdowns, big friend of the lockdowns.

He moved his family to Austria so his kid could go to school because his kid was depressed, and this guy continues to press for lockdowns in the states. I want to take Rush’s words about economic pies and move it into a doctor’s office, because this is the anniversary of covid being named a pandemic.

We have seen with our own eyes — we have experienced with our own pain — how dictatorial people who want to be in public health can be. Not all of them, but far too many, particularly the bigwigs. Particularly when they get aligned with big city mayors like Lori Lightfoot and Billy de Blasio, how just ultra-dictatorial they can be.

And the growth of our American economy has been predicated upon, you know, freedom in new invention that makes space for, you know, like new medical products and approaches and for skill-level increases that results in wage increases for workers. Listen here to Rush Limbaugh talk about how government intervention shrunk the private sector’s economic pie and our room to build wealth.

RUSH: As the private sector continues to shrink — this is the mathematics of it. The old saw about hard work and perseverance, preparation, education — all of the effort that you put in, the devotion that you have. There has to be a pie for you to get your piece of. And the pie has to be growing, it has to be expanding to account for population increase, people retiring and leaving the pie, younger people getting out of college or entering the workforce and wanting their piece of the pie.

The thing about America is that pie has always gotten bigger. It has always expanded. There has always been an opportunity for anybody to get as big a piece of that pie as they reasonably expect or want. That’s what’s changing. The pie is shrinking, and as a result of the pie shrinking there’s less to be had because the government’s usurping more and more of it. And in the midst of all that the president says (impression), “Yep, well, hard work. You work hard, pay off.

“That’s always been the deal, that’s been the promise of America.” It’s not a promise of America. It’s a capitalistic truth. But more than that it’s a human truth. All this guy’s doing is making it harder and harder and harder for everybody in the middle class to be upwardly mobile. That’s what was always distinctive about America, is the pie grew even for the middle class. That’s what’s stopped happening because of him.

TODD: Now, take Rush’s words about college graduates and apply it to Washington, D.C., which is one of the top three cities for college graduates, okay? D.C. It used to be that D.C. was a tradeoff. You went to work for the federal government, you got a lower wage, but you had a guaranteed job. You had lesser retirement benefits; now you have more.

You have retirement benefits not available in the real world. You have salaries not available in the real world. D.C. produces nothing, it markets nothing; it takes — and yet people in D.C. are earning three to four times what the average person is in the country. Eight out of the 10 richest counties in the country are around the Beltway, or at least were.

So take Rush’s example of the pie and how government shrinks it and let’s move it into a doctor’s office. Because tomorrow we’re going to hear Joe Biden read from his teleprompter that this has proven that we need to have Medicaid for well all, Medicare for All. “This has proven that only the government can safest.” Because another Rush lesson is: To leftists, it doesn’t count unless government does it.

So this is one of my favorite examples about government health care and how it has increased the costs. You know that favorite time, if you’re male — and by that, I mean adult human male. if you are in the doctor’s office and it’s coughing time, you know exactly what I mean. Cold fingers in the glove, cough. That’s an awful moment. It’s uncomfortable for everybody.

Women have their analog to that. Just imagine that as your doctor is, you know, touching you in that way. Just imagine that around you there’s 16 bureaucrats with clipboards. Now, just put yourself in that position. “Turn your head the other way,” and you look over there, and there’s some smirking bureaucrat with a clipboard.

One has an iPad, one looks like they’re not paying attention and they might be playing a video game — and maybe that gives you a sense of relief ’cause they’re not staring at you. There’s 16 of them packed into a room with you. That is the… I’ve read this analysis of doctors now.

People, health care providers are outnumbered 16 to one by people whose job it is to make sure you’re following government rules, to make sure you’re filling out the forms the right way — and there’s an enormous amount of money to be taken, to do that. See, it disrupts the value chain. When medicine was entrepreneurial, you’d have a doctor, a nurse, maybe a bookkeeper.

Maybe a couple doctors, maybe a couple nurses, because they were people who were providing the service. Consequently, the rates were lower. Now if a doctor’s office takes insurance, they have to have all these other paper pushers and box checkers who are free riders on this system. They don’t help bake the cake. They don’t even carry the cake to the table!

It’s just when the cake arrives, they eat a bunch of it, and that’s how the cake is shrinking, and it’s so profound in health care. And since tomorrow Biden will likely pitch (from his teleprompter) government medicine, and they’ll celebrate the great heroic Tony Fauci — who’s been on all sides of every issue but all of it bringing power to him. That’s the one consistent measure with Fauci.

They’re gonna push for government health care. Understand this: That those free riders are there now. Their cost structure is there now. And dig this. I go to a doctor who is concierge medicine. She doesn’t take insurance. In fact, I got a couple doctors like that. One’s a specialist. It’s back to the old days.

She and a couple of nurses. The left wants to make that impossible. They want… People who have practices like that, even though they don’t take insurance, they have to use the Medicaid codes and insurance codes because they can’t have that entrepreneurism.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

TODD: James, in Spokane, Washington. James, good morning. You’re on the Rush Limbaugh program. I am Todd Herman, your guide. Hi, James.

CALLER: How you doing, Todd?

TODD: Doing fantastic, man. Love it. I’m in KQNT studios just up the street from where you are in Spokane. I guess. I don’t know where you’re at, but you’re in Spokane. What’s on your mind?

CALLER: Hillyard area. Hillyard area. But that’s beside the point. I’ve been listening to Rush off and on for 30 years. Back in ’14, I got in politics and ran for public office. Rush didn’t give me, bequeath to me, loan me or say, “Here is your analytics” when looking at a situation in politics.” He helped foster that and when he would say, and I quote, “Do not doubt me.”

TODD: (chuckling)

CALLER: I never doubted the man. Ever. Not a single time. Of course, nowadays with coronavirus, when I would say to people, “This coronavirus is bogus. It’s not as bad or it’s not anywhere near what they say it is,” of course they would tell me, “Well, you’re a denier. You don’t believe in the coronavirus.” I said, “No, I do believe it. People are getting sick. That is a fact. I don’t think it’s as bad as they’re telling everybody it is.

“This is a political snow job, and if you don’t see it, there’s something wrong. You are too blinded by partisan politics.” Rush had that ability, from my point of view, to remove himself from the swamp, from the Beltway and go, “Hmm. I see where you’re going with this. I see what circles are being drawn, and I see what’s actually happening here, and it’s bogus.

TODD: And what is, you know, so incredible to me about what Rush did, is this is a man who golfed with presidents; this is a man that anyone in political position or government position who is anywhere center-right would want to seek the favor of or get the ear of. There were celebrities who sought Rush you out, and he was able to maintain that grounding and never get sucked into the vortex of charm or the vortex of access.

I think Rush talked about being in the White House or being in the bedrooms in the White House. He somehow succeeded in being able to criticize people even after they brought him that access. Right? That is such a difficult thing to do in politics, and I think it speaks to Rush’s upbringing but also was one of the reasons we trusted him.

CALLER: Yeah.

TODD: We could hear him talk about George W. Bush is a good man and then get on the next segment and say and he’s got this wrong and this is where he’s wrong and this is where he’s weak. Like with you, it wasn’t just the analytics. It was the consistency, that it didn’t matter who was in my office. You know what I’m saying?

CALLER: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

TODD: And that’s I think —

CALLER: When I ran for politics in ’16 and in ’14, in ’14, I ran against a Republican, ’16 I ran against Democrats, and I could see what each one of them were doing and what they were doing in office is cronyism, pure and simple.

TODD: Yeah. Right.

CALLER: To take a step back and not be that partisan person and not be that person who says, “Okay. I like you as a person. You’re a good person. But how you play your politics is dirty, it’s corrupt, it’s cronyism, and you shouldn’t be in office because what you’re doing is lining your own pockets and not representing and doing your job for the people.”

TODD: Exactly. Exactly. I’m probably a weaker person because I go a different route in politics. Though I do a political show, I have two friends I count in office. I don’t dinner with people. I don’t lunch with people. I need to keep an emotional distance, because I need to be able to tear into people when that is what’s required to tell the truth.

I appreciate the phone call, James. Thanks for calling Rush’s program. It’s an honor to be your guide today. James ran for political office. I want you to hear Rush talk about features and benefits, ok? So he’s gonna take his expertise and knowledge of marketing and makes a brilliant point about Republicans selling ideas versus Democrats giving people instant gratification with stuff.

RUSH: Well, I’m sorry, folks, there’s no common ground because the Republicans do not want to raise taxes. They want to cut spending. The Democrats don’t want to cut spending. The Democrats don’t want any changes. The Democrats want more spending to sustain the entitlements because that enables the gravy train to keep rolling.

As long as the programs that provide for Obama’s-low-information, high-benefits voters, as long as those things continue to provide their benefits, what do they care about the deficit? Seriously! The low-information voter, the Obama voter, what do they care about “unfunded liabilities”? They don’t even know what that is. What do they care about credit ratings?

You run up to a typical Obama voter, “Hey, you know what? We’re gonna lose our AAA credit…” “What? What’s credit? The country has a credit rating? I don’t understand. Explain it to me.” And then you start explaining and you lose them because they don’t care. What do they care about inflation? What’s any of that to them? It’s just gibberish.

A great piece over the weekend, actually a couple great pieces on many of the problems conservatives have. Democrats sell benefits; we sell features. Stop and think about this — and I’ll give you some examples as the program unfolds. The Democrats sell benefits. What does this mean to you?

We talk about features. We talk about how low taxes are gonna spur economic growth and create upward mobility, but there’s no direct benefit to it. It’s a theory that is true, but there’s no immediate payoff to it. There’s no immediate benefit. We’ve got all the great features, but they offer all the benefits.

I saw another analogy that what the Republicans are in the process of doing is making the mistake that Coca-Cola made. Back in 1985, Roberto Goizueta, who was the CEO of Coke, said, “You know what, we’ve had this same formula for all these years. We need to modernize.”

So they came out with New Coke, and an uproar took place, and within, what was it, three weeks they had to reintroduce the old Coke as Coke Classic and the New Coke was gone. Well, the theory that I read, I think at Red State, actually, is the Republican Party has been doing New Coke, but gradually.

We have been caving on the things that identify us. We’ve been giving away our recipe. We changed our recipe on our own, and the latest example of changing the recipe is, “You know what? We’re all for amnesty now. We’ve gotta go demographics. We’ve gotta open the borders and we’ve gotta get those voters.

“Yep! We’re being rejected because of our policy on immigration and Hispanics.” So the Republican Party, nobody knows what it is anymore. Whatever it used to be, it’s changing the formula. Whereas Coke did it overnight — this is just a theory, and it’s interesting.

TODD: So Rush speaks of features and benefits or sizzle and steak. So it is a difficult thing to sell freedom to people who think they’re free, and young people — you know, less-educated voters and last-minute decision-makers in elections — they think they’re free. And what they’re doing is building a cage for themselves, a cage of debt, a cage of overly empowered bureaucrats.

So it’s just one example of how to go at this. One of the things that the Republicans could do is simply take a video game metaphor. These young people think they’ve got all sorts of extra lives saved up in this game. Because the Democrats are constantly telling ’em, free college and college debt forgiveness and free everything else.

So one of the things I think the Republicans need to do is say, “We’re selling you the benefit of not crashing into a wall.” What they’re doing is they’re draining these extra life reserves you have in the background in terms of draining the budget and the debt and making it visual for them.

What Republicans are saying is, “We are building for you a sustainable life where it is not going to crash into a wall, because socialism always crashes into a wall,” or take it to a specific benefit. “You want free college? Okay. Here’s what we can do. Any class, any university is auditable for free, if it’s a state university.

Republicans can say, “Yeah, you know what? We don’t get to be on campus. You don’t get the benefit of the teachers. But you can audit any class from afar, through streaming. And then you can take a test at a discounted rate. And if you pass that test, you get an alternate degree.”

Or they could say for any job, there has to be a path for apprenticeship. We can sell that as a benefit today. ‘Cause most jobs can be learned through apprenticeships. This should be part and parcel of a Republican message. College is too expensive.

You can earn money while you learn, and install this around the country. In other words, freedom adds the product, the feature, and the benefit. The feature is the freedom. The benefit is: Earn while you learn. But this takes creativity (laughing) and that is something that I have found D.C. Republicans sort of lack.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

TODD: Tomorrow, Joe Biden will brag about there $1.9 trillion spending orgy and pretend it was all about covid bailout. Listen to the timelessness of how well Rush Limbaugh knew Democrats. Compare these comments we’re gonna play to this $1.9 trillion, as WaPo called it, showering Americans with … something.

They said “money.” I would choose something else. Rush told us about Obamacare and what it really was. It was a Democrat big power grab, a dependency maker, and it continues to be a massive tax on the ability of doctors to heal. Listen to the Maha boil this all down to a key fact.

RUSH: When we talk about “getting your piece of the pie,” it’s just a name for the economy, the private sector. Well, when the government comes in and absorbs one-sixth of it in the health care takeover called Obamacare, the pie gets smaller. As government grows, how does it grow? What’s government doing? It has to take money from other people, allocate it to itself and then spend it however it wishes. It’s called redistribution; it doesn’t produce anything.

The private sector is getting smaller. The apple, the pie is all getting smaller, and that’s why there’s less of it to be had for people. You want to talk about why the gap between rich and poor is expanding? It’s because the pie’s getting smaller, and the pie can only get smaller as government grows. That’s the argument against government expansion in its simplest form. The argument against government expansion is that it shrinks opportunity for everybody who doesn’t work or have anything to do with government.

TODD: Let me put a point on top of what the Maha told us there. When I worked in D.C. and we ran the “Fire Nancy Pelosi” campaign, one of my lieutenants came in the office and said, “Herman, we just had a guy max out.” I forgot what max out was. It was like $32,000 on a credit card to our Fire Nancy Pelosi campaign. So I immediately called the gentleman to thank him.

The first thing the gentleman said to me was, “I’m a surgeon. This is gonna destroy my business. How come I can only give 32,000 bucks?” I said, “Well, it’s a federal election moment.” I said, “Your wife could give 32,” or was 60, or whatever it was.

They doubled down. You want know why? Because Obamacare made it illegal for that surgeon in Alaska to expand his office, to add square footage or to add new equipment. If he wanted to add anything he had to join a hospital union. That’s how savage they are in seeking control.