http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/03/23/predictable_drive_bys_attempt_to_disqualify_cruz_on_the_premise_that_voters_want_washington_to_workPredictable Drive-Bys Attempt to Disqualify Cruz on the Premise That Voters "Want Washington to Work"
March 23, 2015
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So predictable. Everything the left does is so predictable it ought to be easily nuked. By now everybody opposing the left ought to have ways to just knock 'em out of the water. In this case, Ted Cruz, hey, no experience, he's too stupid, he's too dumb, he doesn't believe in climate change. The only thing the guy's done is shut down the government for 16 days. It's predictable and it ought to be, as a result of that, ineffective.
Greetings, great to have you back. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Our telephone number, if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
Before getting back to this story, which intrigues me, "Are Smartphones Making Our Children Mentally Ill?" I must have sound bites from, let's see, Mark Halperin, John -- yeah, pretty much the left here reacting to Ted Cruz. All of this is predictable. Every bit of it is not gonna be a surprise to any of you.
Let's start on the Today Show today. Now, this is before Cruz announced, but everybody knew he was going to. In fact, I, ladies and gentlemen, I knew of this Friday morning. I knew about it in a private phone call, and I was asked to keep it to myself, which I did. But a lot of people knew. And by yesterday it had leaked out anyway. So all that happened today was the formality of it. But the Drive-Bys, I'm telling you, are nonplussed by it.
Hillary Clinton could not even come close to doing what Ted Cruz did today. Maybe the Der Schlick Meister, Slick Willie, could go out. I don't think he would stay as focused. He'd end up rambling all over the place. But he doesn't need a prompter, except for those moments where he's being policy specific. But there's not anybody who could do what Cruz did today.
And it's not just a matter of talent. It's what's in your heart. It's who you are. People that have problems with public speaking, the greatest way to overcome that is confidence. That's the big fear that people have when they think about having to make a speech in public. "What do I talk about?" Find something that you're passionate about, find something that you really believe, that will give you the confidence to do it.
"Yeah, what if I forget? What if I forget?"
Those are just normal butterflies, happens to everybody, and you will forget now and then. You have to have the talent to vamp during that. But Cruz didn't forget a thing today. Cruz said everything he intended to say without a teleprompter. It's such big news that TheHill.com actually has a story out, the headline is: "No Teleprompter for Cruz." It's that big a news.
Anyway, here are the sound bites, the predictable naysayers. We'll start on the Today Show today, Savannah Guthrie talking to Mark Halperin about Cruz, and she said, "The book on Senator Ted Cruz is that he's whip smart, that he's a real conservative firebrand, he knows how to throw rhetorical bombs that the base loves. Do you consider him a top-tier candidate?"
HALPERIN: I think he's a second-tier candidate. He captures part of what the Republican Party wants. They want someone to go to Washington and shake things up. You hear it again and again from voters, but they also want Washington to work better. And Ted Cruz's challenge is to continue to say, "I can change things," but also, "I can manage things, I can make Washington work," 'cause Republicans want that, too.
RUSH: How many people do you run into -- honestly, now -- with whom you discuss things like this? How many times do you -- and I'm asking open-ended honestly here. This is not rhetorical. How many of you sit around with your friends and say, "You know, we really need somebody that's gonna make Washington work"?
Now, I'll answer that. I have a lot of friends, and I have a lot of political conversations with these people. Not all of them are politically adept, and not all of them are nearly as interested in politics as I am. I mean, my roster of friends crosses a wide spectrum. But I can tell you, none of 'em ever say to me, and I don't say to them, "What we need is somebody to make Washington work." It's just not in the mind-set or vocabulary. Washington not working is by design. That's what gridlock is.
Washington not working, believe it or not, is what the Founders intended. If you define it as government is slow and plodding, the Founders were suspicious of government. They knew that bureaucracies grow unchallenged. They knew that central command, control assumes power as quickly as it can and you don't want that. That's why they set up three branches, separation of powers, checks and balances, all that civics 101 stuff. It was designed to make sure that what's happening now wouldn't happen. It was the best safeguard against tyranny they could build in.
The whole system of checks and balances is rooted around power. There's a lot of power in Congress, a lot of power at the White House, a lot of power over the judiciary. Founders believed that everybody in each branch would guard their power religiously and not let anybody usurp it. And they also knew that every branch would try to obtain power from the other branches. They knew that this would cause -- the term didn't exist at the time -- gridlock.
It was supposed to be really hard to pass laws. It wasn't supposed to be easy. It wasn't supposed to be smooth as silk. It wasn't supposed to be something that was just rubber-stamped. It wasn't supposed to be, "I want this to happen, and if you don't, too bad. I'm gonna make it happen." That's not the way this was founded. The Founders of this country were suspicious of government. They put their faith and trust in the people, by and large.
They were totally devoted to freedom of the individual because that's how they believed the individual was created by God, with an inherent yearning, a natural yearning for freedom. And that government would usurp it. It's human nature. And so they built all of these safeguards in to make sure that government had as tough a time as it could in restricting freedom, which is what a series of laws can be. Every time you pass a law, you're placing restriction on freedom. Some are good. Some are necessary. It's all for a matter of debate.
The point is it was not supposed to be easy. It wasn't supposed to be easy to change the Constitution. It wasn't supposed to be easy to pass a law. Washington, in terms of making Washington work, was not the focus of the founders. Limiting Washington's role in everybody's lives was how they determined the country working, the founders. So my friends and I, we don't sit around and wring our hands over things that are wrong and say, "Washington isn't working."
Now, the left and people like Halperin here, they've talked themselves into believing that this is what the American people want. And I, frankly, I don't think it is. I don't think that the American people go to the polls and vote the way they do hoping that when it's all over, that the Republicans and the Democrats will work together, and they will cooperate and act as one, interested in only the best for all of people. That's not how they vote.
You vote because you want your side to win. You vote because you believe in things you want your side to dominate. So this idea that the people want Washington to cooperate, they want the Republicans and Democrats to work together. The hell with that. I'm long past that, and many people are. The Democrats need to be beaten. The Democrats need to defeated, not worked with. Washington, by design, doesn't work. The way you fix that is diminish its role in everyday life. By definition, Washington isn't gonna work. Big, growing, out-of-control bureaucracies never do. You can't reform them and make them work.
So this idea that people go to the polls, like Halperin says here's, "Well, they want somebody to go to Washington and shake things up." Shake things up? We don't want to shake things up. We want to fix things. Shaking things up, what, just make a bunch of noise? Just win a couple surprise elections and shake things up? No, no, no. Maybe he means shake things up by getting rid of the dominant liberal culture there. If that's what he means, yeah.
But then he says, "You hear it again and again from voters, they want Washington to work better, and Ted Cruz's challenge is to continue to say, 'I can change things, but I can also manage things. I could make Washington work because Republicans want that, too.'" You better define what that means. Because when you start talking that way, when you say I want Washington to work and I want the people there to cooperate, that means Washington is a simple focus in your life, and that's what we do not like.
My life, my day-to-day existence, my business, I'm not focused on whether Washington's working, in and of itself. That's not the purpose. That's not why I would ever support a candidate: "I can make Washington work." Washington can't work. As a result of that, Washington needs to be made smaller. Washington needs to be limited. Washington, government, needs to be more and more out of our lives.
But to people like this, your life isn't complete if Washington is not a central figure or role player in it. And that's the difference. And Cruz -- I haven't heard him say -- he might talk about making Washington work, I don't hear him say that, though. I've never heard him utter the phrase. He may have. I haven't heard everything he said. But this whole notion that -- they're putting words in our mouths. That's not what people I know -- I don't know about you. How many of you, wherever you go, socially or with your families, how many you sit around wringing your hands over Washington not working in the context of you want the next candidate to go there and make it work?
We've gotta define the terms, but making Washington work, most people that I know, that means it's so insignificant we don't talk about it very much. Now all we do is talk about Washington. We've gotten to the point that everything that happens in that town has a direct effect on us, and that's not the way it was supposed to be. And because it has such a central role in so many people's lives, that's where you get this talk, "We need Washington to work." What does that mean?
"Well, we need Washington not to screw up." Well, Washington can't run health care. It's gonna be a mess. Get Washington out of health care. If that's making Washington work, then I'll agree with you. But Washington can't run health care. This Washington can't run anything. By design.
You know, there's a column, Michael Goodwin. This Iranian and Israel stuff, folks, this is getting serious now, this business with Obama and Netanyahu and Israel and so forth. Michael Goodwin had a column in the New York Post yesterday: "Israel: Beware of Obama."
I'll give you the opening paragraph: "First he comes for the banks and health care, uses the IRS to go after critics, politicizes the Justice Department, spies on journalists, tries to curb religious freedom, slashes the military, throws open the borders, doubles the debt and nationalizes the Internet."
"He lies to the public, ignores the Constitution, inflames race relations and urges Latinos to punish Republican 'enemies.' He abandons our allies, appeases tyrants, coddles adversaries and uses the Crusades as an excuse for inaction as Islamist terrorists slaughter their way across the Mideast. Now he’s coming for Israel. Barack Obama’s promise to transform America was too modest. He is transforming the whole world before our eyes. Do you see it yet?"
Now, this is a brilliantly constructed three-paragraph analysis of Barack Hussein O, and we're gonna talk about making Washington to work in the context of all this? We don't send people to Washington to make Washington work. This is an absolute disaster we have on our hands. First he comes for the banks and health care, uses the IRS to go after critics, politicizes the Justice Department. The Constitution doesn't exist now and then and from day to day.
There's much more at stake here than just making Washington work. But this is how they're gonna go about criticizing and disqualifying Ted Cruz. "Well, you know, we don't know, manage things, he's gonna continue to shake things up but, well, can he manage things?"
Can the guy in there now manage things? Well, yeah, depending on what you want managed. Depending on what your objectives are. But this is an abject, absolute disaster that we've got going on. And people continue to look at this circumstance as though it's just traditional Republican versus Democrat. We are so beyond that. The people I know who are hell-bent on getting rid of liberalism, the Democrat Party, never even talk about making Washington work in the sense that Halperin means it.
Now, here's John King over at CNN. This was on New Day this morning. Daily Beast
senior politics editor Jackie Kucinich and Lisa Lerer of AP talking about Ted Cruz's announcement today. John King asked the question, "If he's so well known among the conservative base and so well liked for standing up against the President and against his own leadership, why is Ted Cruz in the single digits in the approval numbers?"
KUCINICH: Nothing actually happens. He makes a fuss, and then it actually goes back to how it was. So, you know, the fact that he does kick up a lot of sand, at the end of the day, it's the same, it's the same result.
LERER: I think there will be an electability question. And Republicans want to win.
KING: His biggest challenge is that a lot of, even Republicans, see him as a protester, as an opposition figure. Not as a president.
RUSH: Yeah, it's amazing, it's predictable, but it's still nevertheless amazing the way they go about disqualifying and choosing our candidate. That's what these people are doing. They're setting themselves up once again to choose the Republican nominee by telling us he can't win. This guy just kicks up sand. He's just a protester. He's just a raconteur. He's not going to change anything. This guy doesn't know what he's doing. Republicans wanna win and Ted Cruz, he doesn't know how to win, not even a lot of Republicans think he can win, and this is how they immediately set out to disqualify. Here's Jerry Brown. I mentioned this sound bite earlier.
BROWN: What he said is absolutely false. Human activity, the industrial activity, the generation of CO2, methane, oxides and nitrogen, all the rest of those greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere, they're heat trapping, and they're causing not just warm drought in California, but severe storms and cold in the East Coast. And that man betoken such a level of ignorance and a direct falsification of existing scientific data. It's shocking, and I think that man has rendered himself absolutely unfit to be running for office.
RUSH: Gotta go to the break, folks. We'll be right back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: No, it's true, I don't depend on government for anything, either. I mean, that's a factor in my belief that, you know, making Washington work -- see, that's the problem, though, folks. Too many people depend on Washington to protect 'em from rapists, it seems. Too many people depend on Washington to feed them. Too many people depend on Washington to clothe them. Too many people depend on Washington for their retirement. Too many people depend on Washington for their health. Too many people depend on Washington for their energy needs. To those people, Washington working does matter.
And you know what it means? The gravy train never stops. Wanting Washington to work means the transfer of wealth becomes more efficient, that taxes get raised, that people who are producing get taxed more so their money can be given to those who aren't working as hard or aren't producing as much, so that we can have a fair country. So I will admit, there are a lot of people to whom Washington working matters. But I'm not one of them. And I'm not trying to be insensitive with this.
But I'm telling you, the idea that there are Republicans galore out there looking for a candidate who can go to Washington and make it work, there aren't any conservatives looking for that. Not real conservatives, if they even know what conservatism is. Washington working in that context, that's liberalism. It isn't conservatism, and that's not how Washington's supposed to work in the first place.
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