You Can Be Proud, Conservatives: Tea Party Puts Country Over PartyJuly 29, 2011
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The views expressed by the host on this program make more sense than anything anybody else happens to be saying out there. And the reason is the views expressed by the host on this show are rooted in a daily unstoppable, relentless pursuit of the truth. And I am your host, El Rushbo, the hardest-working man in-the-know business. Friday. Let's go. That's right, the hardest working man in-the-know business. How are you, my friends? Great to have you here. When we get to the phones, Open Line Friday means that you pretty much have free rein, talk about whatever you wish to talk about. You want to blame me, have at it. You want to -- when it's all said and done, when they take everything away from everybody, I'll still have enough, go ahead and say it. Telephone number, 800-282-2882. E-mail address, elrushbo@eibnet.com.
You know, all of this discussion apparently has worked. The Boehner 3.0 version has just been released. It's a large PDF file. I've had just a brief chance to go through this. It's 104 pages and they have to have so many pages just to have room for all the zeros, as they talk about all the trillions of dollars here. The word "trigger" does not appear one time in it. The word "taxes" shows up once but not in the context of raising them. "Balanced budget" shows up four times. Boehner 3.0 basically does: Would pave the way for the debt limit to be raised through the 2011 election in two chunks, but it would mandate that the second increase of the debt ceiling could only occur after a balanced budget amendment passed both chambers of Congress and went to the states for ratification. That's the big difference in Boehner 3.0.
Now, before we get into the specifics of all of this, I want to say something to you conservatives out there. I want to tell you how damn proud of you I am, because you made this happen. The conservative intelligencia, the conservative so-called media inside the Beltway would have accepted anything. Yesterday, the day before, last night, would have accepted anything that Boehner put forth, because they are operating out of fear. The Republican leadership is operating out of fear. I want you to think, to transfer that to your personal life, and I want to ask you to consider: Whenever you do anything out of fear, how does it turn out? Doing anything from the perspective of fear is disastrous, or potentially so. And that has been the position of the Republican leadership and the inside the Beltway so-called conservative media. Fear. Fear of being blamed, primarily. But fear of other things. The age-old fears, the fears rooted in the mentality of being consistent, constant losers.
Remember the Republicans won the control of the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in 40 years, and one of the biggest problems they faced was they had 40 years of being in the minority as their mindset. It was hard within a matter of days to start acting like winners. They never had been. It's like the person who loses a tremendous amount of weight stills feel fat. It's just what you get conditioned to. You stop and look at yourself in the mirror every time you see a mirror, just to confirm that you actually have lost weight, because you don't believe it. The same thing with people who are consistent losers, and Ray LaHood yesterday citing we need to go back to Bob Michel was a classic example. We've got to go back to being full-time losers, that's our place in Washington. Well, you don't accept that, and I don't accept it.
You have not accepted it and you've let it be known that you will not accept a loser attitude and a loser mentality among our leadership in Washington. How in the world can we look at ourselves as losers with this man, Barack Obama, as president? This man is on his back. He is on his last legs. The gross domestic product of this country is 1.3 percent. We are living in a manmade disaster, personally made by Barack Obama. There is no reason to compromise with people who have not offered any substantive ideas of their own. There is no reason to continue to act like losers, particularly coming off the November elections, when we were landslide winners.
Winners do not compromise. Winners do not compromise with themselves. The winners who do compromise are winners who still don't believe in themselves as winners, who still think of themselves as losers. And you and I are finished with supporting people who think of themselves as losers, or in the minority, or we don't have the power, or we don't control all three branches, or what have you. I wish Barack Obama would give a speech every day. I don't believe the news reports that say Obama's losing sleep. I don't believe that. I don't believe his hair's getting gray. I think they're putting flour in it every day to make it look like it's getting grayer or whatever the makeup trick is.
This man has taken our country to the brink. The gross domestic product, the growth numbers today, my friends, are unacceptable. It is a shame and it is an embarrassment. The ChiCom economy is growing at 94 percent. We're being outperformed by a communist country. There's no excuse for this. This should not be our new norm, and there is no way that we ought to be compromising with the architect of the disaster that has befallen our country. On what basis is Barack Obama viewed as a leader? On what basis is Barack Obama viewed as even a winner? He and his party were shellacked in the November elections. There are 25 or 30 courageous Republican freshmen who held out for this. Mike, grab audio sound bites 9, 10, and 11. I want you to hear these. This is the media, befuddled over these Tea Party freshmen.
Last night it's on Anderson Cooper 19 on CNN he spoke to senior political analyst Gloria Borger about the House not voting on Boehner's debt bill version 2.0. Anderson Cooper said, "What happened? It looked like things were moving in the right direction for Speaker Boehner earlier today. They had the test vote. It went big. What happened?"
BORGER: He ran up against freshmen who don't owe him anything, Anderson. They were elected outside of the establishment, and honestly a lot of them don't care if they get reelected.
COOPER: (coughing)
BORGER: They believe they were sent to Congress to make government smaller and, duhh, to cut the deficit, and this is what they intend to do -- and they believe that the Boehner bill is not strong enough because they understand that, at some point, there's going to have to be a compromise. So they want the House to have the strongest possible bargaining position that it can have.
RUSH: So Borger, after she says the House freshmen believe they were sent to Washington to make government smaller and that's what they intend to do, Cooper and Borger have this exchange. John King is part of this, too.
COOPER: Gloria, it seems when you talk to some they don't care necessarily about being reelected.
BORGER: (incredulous) No! They don't! These are --
COOPER: Which is actually kind of refreshing, I gotta say.
BORGER: Well, it is, but -- BUT!
COOPER: (chuckling) It is a bug "but."
BORGER: But compromise is the way things get done in Washington, and it shouldn't be a dirty word, I don't think. Maybe. But I understand that they're standing on principle. But they're also standing on the precipice of something, and that is the country going into default.
RUSH: No, Gloria, the country is not going to go into default. There have been secret contingency meetings, and we've got the story. I don't even need the story, though, to know the country's not going into default! We're also tired of being lied to. The country is not going into default. The Treasury has had meetings with Obama and with others about paying the bondholders first which is what must be done to avoid default. It's going to be done. There will not be any default. If there is a default it's because President Obama wants there to be one -- ad if there is a default, he will make it happen rolling the dice that he can get away with blaming the Republicans for it. But there will not be a default if the debt ceiling is not raised.
Now, guess who today is chiming in all of a sudden? Starting yesterday, actually, with: "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! We gotta get this done." Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs. Wall Street. The same tactic, the same technique that was used before TARP is being redeployed. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! We face a disaster! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! We've got to get this done!" No, we don't have to get it done just to get it done. We don't have to get it done just to get it off somebody's plate. We don't have to get it done from a standpoint or a basis of fear. We do not have to compromise with the people who are destroying this country who will not put forth their own ideas -- and the reason they won't put forth their own ideas is because were they to do so, the country would automatically totally reject every one of them.
Because every idea they have is more of the same that has destroyed this country and this economy and continues to do so. Conservatives -- those of you in this audience who are conservatives -- there is no reason for fear. There is no reason to compromise with the people who have done the destruction and will do more if they prevail. There is no reason to act like losers. A, we're not losers. B, in the strict sense, we're landslide winners going back last November. And I don't care what poll you look at and I don't care what media report you listen to, the independents have not fled our reservation. The independents are more and more opposed to the policies that have contributed to the destruction of our economy. It is Obama who is in a panic. It is Obama who desperately needs this.
We should not and will not be the lifeline to his reelection. But if we continue to act out of fear, this is what will happen. Obama goes out there and makes another speech today and begs people to call Washington. Let me tell you who is calling. Every time he goes out and does that, it's you. His people aren't calling. They're not motivated. You are the ones who are calling. You are the ones melting the phone lines in Washington. That's why there's Boehner 3.0. You. And Boehner 3.0 is not still etched in stone. It's still subject to be changed during the course of the day today, but those of us who held firm and refused to go along just because we're members of the We Gotta Do Something Caucus... "We gotta do something! We gotta do anything!"
No, we don't.
It is fear that makes people say, "Eh, that's the best we can do right now. We gotta take it. We gotta sign this." Sorry, I don't subscribe to any of this that I am hearing from the so-called conservative intelligencia media inside the Beltway. They would have encouraged the Republicans to vote for anything that Boehner put forth yesterday and last night. There's been a third bill, an actual version C of this going along -- being talked about, being negotiated -- behind everybody's back all along. Boehner, Reid. What Boehner said, after he walked out of the meetings with Obama, "I'm going to start talking to congressional leaders," that's exactly what he did: Reid and McConnell. That's Boehner 4.0, and that's exactly what we told you it was yesterday.
What I speculated about yesterday turns out to be exactly what was happening. Now, Politico and other news stories documented to be true. Boehner sent his bill over to the Senate. Harry Reid, all of a sudden, sees some things in it he likes. The Boehner bill becomes the Reid bill; it gets back sent to the House Republicans (after they think by sending their bill over to Reid they've got the Democrats over the barrel). That bill gets changed dramatically, looks nothing like it was when it arrived at Senate, gets sent back to the House and the barrel is back on the Republican side. They are the ones over the barrel. So we'll see when this all unfolds. One more audio sound bite before we go to the break with F. Chuck Todd, MSNBC this morning. This is his opinion here of the House freshmen and their steadfast.
F. CHUCK TODD: (haltingly) Boehner ... Cantor ... and McCarthy were ... linked ... in this. This isn't necessarily about John Boehner not being able to corral these folks. The question is could any Republican speaker have corralled these votes at this time. Here's the issue they had: They can't buy them off. They don't want earmarks, they don't care about their committee assignments -- and many of these newcomers didn't get there raising a lot of money anyway so being promised fundraising all that doesn't work. It may be refreshing on one hand, but it makes it that much harder to try to arm-twist and get this vote count to happen.
RUSH: Lo and behold! Isn't that exactly what we wanted to end up in Washington? Can't buy them off! The media is ticked off. F. Chuck can't believe the establishment can't buy the votes of these Tea Party freshmen. That's why we need to keep winning elections.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The Tea Party is putting country before party.
Didn't Obama tell us that that's what we had to do? The Tea Party is putting country before party. They can't be bought off with committee assignments or with campaign re-election funds. They can't be bought, and Washington can't understand this. They admit that it's refreshing but it's not as refreshing as compromise would be, speaking of which: Dingy Harry just came out and said that Boehner 3.0 is worse -- is even more unacceptable -- than the original. How is that for the spirit of compromise? We have the President of the United States, the real loser in all of this, the man who is in real trouble -- and we need to start acting that way, and we need to start believing it.
I have never understood why and how members our party can feel defensive and filled with fear. What is there to be afraid of? Why be afraid of somebody taking it up to 10%? The growth rate is at 1.3%. Why be afraid of running against that? Why be afraid of opposing that? And I'm fed up of being afraid with the media. Doing whatever you do because you are afraid will guarantee you will do the wrong thing because your motivation is distorted. The Tea Party is putting the country before. The debt ceiling is our friend. It will cut spending by 4%. What's wrong with that? That's what we're here to do. That's what the November election was about: Cutting spending.
It's not a disaster. It's called a good start!
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