What Palin's Trump Speech Says About the State of the Conservative Movement

By Rush Limbaugh

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Man, are we loaded today.  I'll tell you right now, it's going to take all three hours and then some.  I'm gonna try to get it all in here in three hours.  Much of today is gonna build on points that I have been making the past two days, evolving, growing, adding evidence to it, all rooted around the question, who is and what is the conservative movement, and why is it apparently behaving so oddly?  I think I can explain this and much else to all of you as the program unfolds today before your very eyes and ears.  It will explain the massive support for Donald Trump that people can't figure out.  It will explain why there's abject hatred and panic over Trump in the Washington Republican and even conservative media establishment.

 

Trump picking Sarah Palin, or Palin deciding to endorse Trump just exacerbates it.  And, by the way, Sarah Palin is gonna help me make my points today, because I read the transcript for her speech that she made, and it's actually -- the speech that Palin made yesterday for Trump, I saw people pan it, say she looked like she lost her place, she was reading cue cards, she didn't seem to be all there.  I didn't see it, but I read the transcript of her speech, and I'm telling you it is -- well, I don't want to overdo it and say brilliant, but I'll tell you, she's got substantive, logical reasons for doing what she's doing.  And she explained it yesterday for anybody who really wanted to pay attention to listen to it.  So I'm gonna explain that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: These are just thoughts that I had that I'm sharing with you.  Don't attach any more to it.  I want to warn you, this may not be good for me to say, and I'm gonna try to make it so it's not necessary, but you may need a lot of nuance listening to me today.  Avoid knee jerks today if you can and hang in as I go through some of this stuff, because it's not complicated, but it is detailed.  And of course I, ladies and gentlemen, excel at making the complex understandable.

This actually isn't that complex.  It's just so strange.  I'm not trying to be cryptic.  I tell you, the last couple of days, remember the piece in National Review, David French, where he speculated that one of the problems going on with the Republican Party is they don't even know who their base is, that they have overestimated who their conservative base is.  They do not understands it and overestimate it.  In other words, the conservative base is not nearly as conservative as they think it is, nor is it conservative as they define it.

That's key.  The way the Republican establishment defines conservatism is not what it is.  To them it's hayseed hicks, pro-lifers running around in pickup trucks with shotguns in the back, bitter clingers.  You know, Obama's not just speaking for himself on that.  There are a lot of people in Washington in both parties who have that opinion of conservatives, and the Republicans might even look at their own base in that regard.  But the truth is that they've overestimated the conservative base and furthermore they are clueless in understanding what it is that motivates their own base, and, as such, they're incapable of understanding why Trump has any support.

Now, I'm gonna explain all that to you today, and more.  'Cause I have been researching it, delving deeply into it.  My own instincts in this from a year ago are being confirmed on a couple of things.  Snerdley tells me... I didn't... I haven't seen this, but why would I doubt Snerdley?  I mean, why would I think Snerdley would be wrong about this? Why would I think Snerdley would come to me with something wrong?

He's telling me that George Will... Is it a column today? (interruption) Well, you read it today.  I don't know when it was published, but apparently George Will is saying that if Trump wins, he's advocating third party. (interruption) That he will go third party? (interruption) Oh, it was an interview? (interruption)  It's not a column? (interruption)  All right.  All right. (interruption)  Oh.  If it's in your stack, I'll find it.  I've been swamped in here.

I haven't had a chance to go through it. Anyway, George Will is talking third party.  I can explain why that's happening, too, folks.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I think, folks, the thing that's happening here, the awakening that's taking place, and I think it's a serious awakening that is taking place within the Republican Party and the so-called conservative movement.  When I talk about the conservative movement, to me I'm talking about Washington.  I'm not talking about you in the grassroots.  I'm talking about the establishment, conservative media, the brainiacs, the think tanks, the professors.  And it's not bad, don't misunderstand.  I'm just saying that there is a new understanding of who out in the country is actually conservative and who isn't.

I think what's actually being revealed here is that the Republican Party itself and even some of the conservative intelligentsia has misjudged and overestimated the conservatism of the base, negatively.  They have a negative connotation of conservatism.  They don't like it, obviously.  They think it's the pro-lifers, the social issues, that's what they think conservatives are, and that that's all they are.
And they're embarrassed of 'em, don't like going to the convention with 'em, and their wives nag 'em about it. And what's being discovered here by virtue of the Trump candidacy is that this misunderstanding is being exposed.  And it's now out in the open that the Republican conservative base is not monolithically conservative.  It has lots of components that have been lumped together as conservative maybe for the past 30 years.  And there are some people who think that this masquerade's over, is good that it's over, that the idea that conservatism is one type of thinking and one person and a monolithic thing, some people think it's a great idea to have this blown up.



I think the best way to explain it is that there are a lot of people in this country who are conservative.  There are a lot of those people that won't admit it, for whatever reason, don't want anybody to know it, for whatever reason or another, and therefore they live and vote and do things for the most part which are conservative, certainly not liberal.  But that's not the glue that unites them all.  If it were, if conservatism -- this is the big shock -- if conservatism were the glue, the belief and understanding of deep but commonly understood conservative principles, if that's what defined people as conservative and was the glue that made the conservative movement a big movement, then Trump would have no chance.

He literally would have no chance.  Because, whatever he is he's not and never has been known as a doctrinaire conservative.  But neither is John McCain.  Neither is 90% of the Republican Party, so it's not a criticism.  It's not an allegation.  The point is that if conservatism were this widely understood, deeply held belief system that united conservatives and united people as conservatives, then outsiders like Trump wouldn't stand a prayer of getting support from people.  Yet he is.  Therefore, it's safe to conclude that there are other things at play here that make people conservative.  And look, I'm gonna go back to it.

The thing that's in front of everybody's face and it's apparently so hard to believe, it's this united, virulent opposition to the left and the Democrat Party and Barack Obama.  And I, for the life of me, don't know what's so hard to understand about that.

Now, Sarah Palin and her speech.  There she is in Tulsa.  She's out making a campaign appearance.  I guess Trump's in Tulsa.  Oh, really?  I just was told, "She looks better today."  See?  These poor women in politics, like Hillary.  They can't get a break.  "She looks better today."  What, did she not look good yesterday?  What, you didn't like that cowboy jacket or whatever it was?  Why are they in Tulsa on the eve of the Hawkeye Cauci and the New Hampshire primary?  Why are they there?  The answer is easy.  The answer is easy.  I'm just asking it rhetorically.

Let's look at her endorsement speech.  I don't have the whole thing here, but I've got most of it.  It's not getting very much attention.  Her jacket is getting more attention than what she said.  I've seen people criticize her delivery, she lost her place, had to look at cue cards, Trump looked kind of out of place being not behind the podium.  That, by the way, I said this in the first hour.  I was surprised that Trump went the endorsement route.  I mean, I am not surprised that he would accept it, but Trump just doesn't look like Trump giving up the podium and standing aside, I don't care who it is for.  And endorsements are kind of the way it's done, right, in by-the-book politics, and Trump's not by-the-book politics.  But what is by-the-book politics is win at all costs.
 

 

So if you have to suck it up and say you support ethanol, and if you want to accept endorsements from somebody that's gonna undermine Cruz, I guess you'll do it.  But she, in her speech yesterday, she explained why conservatives are angry about what's happening to the country and why they are as angry at the Republican establishment as they are at the Democrats.  And she explained how a permanent political class has been created and corrupted by what's now known as the donor class.  And she made it plain that what she wants to do now is participate in a movement that holds every one of those people accountable for the damage they've done to the country, for the failures they continue to mount up and be.

"When asked why I would jump into a primary -- kind of stirring it up a little bit maybe -- and choose one over some friends who are running and I’ve endorsed a couple others in their races before they decided to run for president, I was told left and right, 'you are going to get so clobbered in the press. You are just going to get beat up, and chewed up, and spit out.' You know, I’m thinking, 'and?' You know, like you guys haven’t tried to do that every day since that night in ‘08, when I was on stage nominated for VP."

Her point is, and she got close to saying this in her own words but didn't.  But really what people are complaining about, you know, why would you do this.  What's the Republican Party ever really done for her?  I mean, besides nominate, McCain chose her.  But members of the Republican establishment did their best to destroy her, to impugn her reputation.  The people that were assigned to handle her were out leaking to the press how stupid she is and how it was so bad, that she's so stupid. These people couldn't vote for their own candidate, McCain, because if something happened to him and she became president, they couldn't live with themselves if they'd made that.

So they were gonna vote Democrat or not vote at all.  These were the people responsible for shepherding her through the campaign.  So she's got a legitimate question.  I've already been clobbered.  I've been clobbered by the people who are gonna clobber me today before.  "And, like you all, I’m still standing. So those of us who’ve kind of gone through the ringer as Mr. Trump has, makes me respect you even more. That you’re here, and you’re putting your efforts, you’re putting reputations, you’re putting relationships on the line to do the right thing for this country. Because you are ready to make America great again."

I think it's a salient point.  It wasn't just Sarah Palin who was smeared by the media and the rest of the Democrat Party, and even the Republican establishment.  It was her supporters, by extension, who were smeared and insulted.  And now the same suspects, same usual suspects, are trying to do the same thing all over again, this time to Trump and his supporters, but Trump is fighting back, where she couldn't because she was part of the organization trying to win.

 

So she couldn't fight back even though I'm sure she was tempted to.  I think this explains why so many Tea Party supporters and other conservatives are drawn to Trump even if he doesn't, you know, broadcast or display a bunch of conservative credentials.  I mean, people have a bond and a connection here to people who are laughed at, made fun of, criticized, ripped to shreds and so forth just because of what they believe and who they are.

She said, "Now, eight years ago, I warned that Obama's promised fundamental transformation of America. That is was going to take more from you, and leave America weaker on the world stage. And that we would soon be unrecognizable. Well, it's the one promise that Obama kept. But he didn't do it alone, and this is important to remember. Especially those of you, like me, a member of the GOP, this is what we have to remember, in this very contested, competitive, great primary race.
"Trump's candidacy, it has exposed not just that tragic ramifications of that betrayal of the transformation of our country, but too, he has exposed the complicity on both sides of the aisle that has enabled it, okay? Well, Trump, what he's been able to do -- which is really ticking people off, which I'm glad about. He's going rogue left and right, man. That's why he's doing so well. He's been able to tear the veil off this idea of the system, the way that the system really works. And please hear me on this.

"I want you guys to understand more and more how the system, the establishment, works, and has gotten us into the troubles that we are in in America." So she's doing... You don't think she has wanted to do this for years?  You don't think she's wanted to launch back at these people who tried to ruin her reputation and destroy her, and she wasn't able to because of the obvious requirements of party loyalty, loyalty to McCain and all that?  She said, "The permanent political class has been doing the bidding of their campaign donor class, and that's why you see that the borders are kept open for them, for their cheap labor that they want to come in.

"That's why they've been bloating budgets. It's for crony capitalists to be able suck off of them. It's why we see these lousy trade deals that gut our industry for special interests elsewhere. We need someone new, who has the power, and is in the position to bust up that establishment to make things great again. It's part of the problem. His candidacy -- which is a movement. It's a force; it's a strategy. It proves as long as the politicos get to keep their titles, and their perks, and their media ratings, they don't really care who wins elections," as long as they get to maintain what they've got now.

She's not wrong.

She's more right about that even she may know.

END TRANSCRIPT

Link:

• What Palin's Trump Speech Says About the State of the Conservative Movement

Barbara Walters Explains How the Debates Changed Mitt Romney's Image

From Rush Limbaugh:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Interesting yesterday on The View on ABC, Barbara Walters talking about Mitt Romney and the three presidential debates, and Barbara Walters is explaining here to the audience of The View why Romney did well, why Romney won the debates.  Barbara Walters is explaining the impact that Romney had and why his debate strategy worked.  Now, I want you to understand something as you listen to this.  As irritating as it might be to you, you go into that debate on Monday night, and the partisans have made up their minds.  There's nothing that can happen in that debate, for example, to make you change your mind, vote for Obama, there's nothing.

By the same token, there's nothing gonna happen in that debate to make a committed Obama voter change his or her mind.  Who's left?  Well, these people that are amazingly undecided, can't pull the trigger, don't know what to do, undecided for a whole host of reasons. That's the target audience, and a lot of them, we're told, were women.  So you have to keep that in mind when you listen here, because I would venture to say that the target audience that Romney was aiming for in that debate Monday night was the people that watch The View.  I want you to listen to her and listen to her audience reaction.

WALTERS:  Before these debates, the general impression of Romney was that he wasn't too smart, and that he was very stiff, and that if he happened to be elected president, it would be a disaster.  Now, you know, I don't give my opinions here.  What you have after these three debates is that people feel, whether they want to vote for him or not, that this is a qualified man, this is an intelligent man, and this is a man who we now don't describe as stiff and totally out of touch.  What is the most important thing for Romney is that he's a different person seen by the public now than he was before the three debates.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  I'm looking at the face of the Official Program Observer, Mr. Snerdley, who's got a deep frown on his face.  Why are you frowning at me?  Yes, that was ribald applause.  But I find this fascinating.  I knew people thought Romney was stiff, but I didn't know people thought he was dumb.  That is an albatross around the Republican Party's neck ever since Bush.  I mean, that accusation that Bush was a dumb hick cowboy and so forth because of the way he spoke and the deer-in-the-headlight eyes during TV appearances and press conferences, and they used that to great effect.  Because Bush is not that at all.  He's not stupid. He's not dumb. It's ridiculous.  But it stuck, particularly with a lot of moderates and leftists.  And now apparently Barbara Walters said a lot of people thought the same thing about Romney -- stiff and out of touch, not very smart -- and he's overcome all that.  In these three debates, he's overcome it all.

This is profound.  What she's also saying and didn't say, that what we knew about Romney was what Obama was telling us about Romney via Obama's TV ads.  And what she's saying here is, we saw a Romney that bears no resemblance to what we were told he was by the Obama campaign.  And the audience on The View, believe me, was the target audience for the Romney camp in that debate Monday night, people that watch this show, people like them, and they all applauded Barbara Wawa there.  I just throw this out to you because it's all part of the mix.  Here is Pat Caddell.  This is last night on Cavuto on Fox, and Cavuto asked him about the last debate.  He wants to know, did it change anything?

CADDELL:  If Obama does not get the traditional presidential incumbent bounce at the beginning of the week, it's Katie, bar the door.  This is Romney's election to lose and until October 3rd he was losing it.  Now he's back into it.  Look what's happening in the states like Pennsylvania, Minnesota, states that have had no money.  If I told you two weeks before the election in 2008 that Indiana and North Carolina would go for Barack Obama, you would have said I was crazy.  This is on the verge of tipping. We're somewhere between '80 and '04 and right now if the president didn't get what he shoulda gotten last night, uh-oh.

RUSH:  Well, he didn't.  He didn't get a bounce out of that debate on Monday night.  It was probably zero impact for either of them.  It's the last debate, it happened, it's gone, nobody's reacting to it one way or the other.  There was some strident reaction during the debate, shortly thereafter, but the overall consensus was that Romney did what he had to do, did it in spades, didn't get hurt. Obama didn't help himself, so Caddell says it's over.  And Caddell is right.  You go look at where Obama is spending time.  These are states that he was supposed to have owned and wrapped up.

The biggest thing that's working against Barack Obama right now, and I say this over and over again to make the point, you cannot simply examine Obama within the context of this campaign to understand where Obama is with the American people.  You gotta go back all the way to the campaign of 2008 and the first couple, three months of his regime.  That's the Obama that everybody's comparing to, is the 2008 Obama, who was Mr. Perfect, who was Mr. Messiah, who was gonna heal the planet, lower the sea levels, cure all the ills, get rid of partisanship, get rid of racism, the world is gonna love us, and look what he's become.  He has become exactly what he ran against in 2008.

He's become nothing but a mudslinger. He's nothing but a down-and-dirty typical politician, throwing mud, throwing dirt, desperate to hang on, not telling people the truth about things.  He is the exact opposite of the way he was presented in 2008.  He's the exact opposite of the way he portrayed himself in 2008.  If you want to have an understanding of how people who voted for Obama eagerly in 2008 are looking at him this year, you have to include their frame of reference for the guy.  And their frame of reference is not just these three debates.

Their frame of reference starts with a campaign in 2007 all the way into 2008 and the election.  And even the first couple, three months with the stimulus bill, Porkulus, shovel-ready jobs, all this great stuff was gonna happen.  None of it has.  He's not the person anybody thought that he was and it's been nothing but downhill.  Plus there's no record to run on. He's got nothing that's happened that he can say, "You want four more years of this?"  That's why he is in big trouble in all of these states that should have been automatics, just given incumbency.

END TRANSCRIPT

Link:

• Barbara Walters Explains How the Debates Changed Mitt Romney's Image

Obama Thought He Won the Debate!

From Rush Limbaugh:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Toby Harnden from the UK Daily Mail. This is unbelievable, but I believe it. "Obama 'Believed he had BEATEN Romney' in Denver Debate." He walked off that stage thinking he had won that debate. I think the guy lives in an alternate universe. He is a narcissist. He's incapable of losing these things, in his mind. He's a legend in his own mind. I have no problem believing this at all.

However, there are people on the Democrat side who are shocked at this, including Axelrod. David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist and the quasi-president while Obama's out on the campaign trail, "was stunned that the president left the stage feeling that he had won the debate. ... Obama believed he'd got the better of Romney as he walked off stage to the dismay of his aides, according to a Democrat close to the campaign. The president failed to prepare properly, opting instead to visit the Hoover Dam the day before ..."

 He complained about being kept inside. He complained about having to read. He complained about having to prepare. He said that it was "a drag." The Democrat that is the source here for Toby Harnden, the writer of the story, said that Obama "was so disdainful of Romney that he didn't think he needed to even engage with him." The story says that he "had one-liners on 47% prepared but chose not to use them."

So this story in the UK Daily Mail would ask us to believe (and I do) that Obama thought he cleaned Romney's clock when that thing was over. He walked off the stage thinking he won. And the reason? He hates Romney. He has such disdain for Romney that he thought all he had to do was just stand there. He thinks everybody else sees Romney the way he does: A rich, distant, insensitive boor.

There have been stories in the past six weeks, maybe two months that have gotten into a little detail on how much Obama really dislikes Romney personally. He dislikes Romney personally, and he dislikes what Romney stands for. Romney, to him -- and I believe this, too. Romney to Barack Obama personifies what's wrong with this country. In Obama's view, Romney is an example of the wrong kind of people winning.
And the reason why people need to get a fair shot is because when dull, boring, dryballs like Romney do well, there's something wrong. I believe all of this. I believe that Obama is so cocky and so arrogant and so condescending, he thought he won. He is such a narcissist. Can you imagine, he walks off that stage and he has to hear how he got shellacked? Can you imagine being the guy that had to tell him that?

Can you imagine him walking off the stage and actually thinking he won? You see, I can, because I know these people. I hate to keep saying it that way. I'm not bragging. I'm trying to tell you: It's easy to know these people. All you have to do is understand liberalism. I'm sorry for saying that so much, too, but it's all you have to do. If you just understand liberalism, if you're willing to admit what it is and who liberals are, the rest is easy -- and it always works.

It never fails.

Because liberals are what they are.

From liberal to liberal, person to person, that's who they are.

It's amazing for some people to hear, I'm sure, that Obama thinks he won that thing.

But don't doubt the story that he does.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is from The Daily Caller.  "The president’s top campaign staffers changed his re-election strategy while he was still on the debate-podium during his losing debate against Gov. Mitt Romney, according to an article in The New York Times.  'On the conference call convened by aides in Denver and Chicago even as the candidates were still on stage … they reversed a longstanding strategic decision,' without the president’s involvement, according to the Oct. 8 article.  'At the start of the campaign they had decided to attack Mr. Romney as a committed conservative rather than a flip-flopper, but now they decided to use his debate statements to argue that he was reinventing himself,' the article said."

They really believe that -- folks, this is breathtaking to me.  I don't know how to say this any more emphatically than I have, and I'm sorry to be repetitive on it.  They really believe that the Romney who showed up was a fraud.  They believe that the Romney in the ads that they've created is who he really is. 

Now, every time I say this, Snerdley gets on the IFB here, "Come on, they don't really believe that, they're just --" they do believe it!  Obama doesn't like Romney.  He has a personal dislike for Romney and a generic dislike for what Romney is and how Romney became what he is.  Romney's everything about America Obama despises or resents.  But they think Romney's the biggest fraud on earth.  And by the way, listen to Obama.  Grab sound bite number nine.  Last night San Francisco at a fundraiser, here's Obama telling his audience about Romney.

OBAMA:  After the debate, I had a bunch of folks come to me, "Don't be so polite, don’t be so nice."  But I want everybody to understand something.  What was being presented wasn’t leadership; that's salesmanship.
RUSH:  Okay, I think we've got a talking point preview, I think maybe an indication here of what Obama's going to do in the next debate.  Just accuse Romney of being disingenuous, accuse him of being a fake.

(imitating Obama) "You're not the Mitt Romney everybody knows. It's just salesmanship. Everything you're saying, there's nothing genuine about what you're doing. You're not engaged in leadership."  All of this simply buttresses my point.  They don't have the courage to admit that Romney is who he is, because they're living in this bubble, they're living in this alternate universe.  If it weren't Romney, it would be whoever the nominee is.  No Republican, no conservative, is genuine.  We're all mean-spirited, extreme, racist, bigot, sexist, homophobe, whatever.

But to me, folks, it's astounding that they are able to do this.  I couldn't do it.  I couldn't live lies like this.  I mean, Obama, I know exactly who he is.  I don't make it up.  I don't pretend he's something he's not in order to make myself feel better.  And I'm gonna tell you, if this keeps up, if they continue to behave, campaign, and act as though the real Romney is a fraud, they're gonna lose this thing bigger than anybody imagines.  Mark my words.  Now, to her credit, Soledad O'Brien isn't buying it, either.  This is this morning on Starting Point on CNN, and she had as her guest Dick "Turban," the senator from Illinois.  She said, "The headline is 'Did Obama Just Throw the Entire Election Away?' And it gets worse from there. Tell me a little bit about if you think, in fact, that this falling that you're seeing in the polling is literally due to what happened that night in the debate."

DURBAN: Disappointed with the debate, but believe the president understands, uh, his challenge now. He was shocked and surprised. Many of us were. Mitt Romney came on that, uh, set at the first debate and said things which completely contradicted what he'd said in the campaign before. I think it caught the president a little bit b-by surprise. He won't be surprised again.

RUSH: See? See?

Romney didn't say anything different.

What Romney did was say some things for the first time.

What did Romney do for the first time? He took it to Obama! He said (summarized), "You and your policies have killed X-number of jobs. What you've done has resulted in this. No, Mr. President, that's not true. The truth of the matter is X." What Romney did was challenge Obama for the first time. Well, I guess they're believing this idea that Romney said, "Obama's a nice guy, but he's just in over his head."

Romney threw away the nice guy business and he just said, "Look, not only are you in over your head, you're unqualified and you're wrong!" So they might be seeing that in Romney for the first time, but we know he's right. We know that's who he is. We know that's what Republicans and conservatives believe in a generic sense. But even Dick Durbin here is saying, "We didn't know this guy who showed up! I mean, that's a fraud. Romney was a fraud," and Soledad O'Brien is not buying it.

O'BRIEN: You cannot tell me that his poor debate performance was he was sitting there stunned in front of the American public as opposed to presenting at least his side of the argument. People have talked a little bit about the air pressure.

DURBAN: (nervous snickering)

O'BRIEN: People have talked about a lack of practice. It certainly can't be, "I was just stunned standing there listening."

DURBAN: I'll just tell you, uhh, that the president understands the challenge of the debates.

RUSH: Really? So she said (paraphrased), "Look, Senator Durban, I know I'm a member of the liberal media and I'm not that bright. But I'm smart enough to know that your excuse is full of it. Are you trying to tell me that the president of the United States, the guy that we're telling everybody is the smartest guy that's ever lived, was so stupefied by the Romney he saw that he had a brain freeze and he didn't know what to do?"

Not even Soledad O'Brien is buying it! That's how absurd it is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's Tommy in Springdale, Arkansas. I'm glad you waited, Tommy. It's great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: I've been a lifelong Democrat. Since I've been listening to you, you've kind of shown me the light.

I'd like to thank you for it.

RUSH: When did that start happening, Tommy?

CALLER: About two years ago.

RUSH: Two years ago. What was it? Do you remember anything particular or was it a slow, evolving kind of process?

CALLER: It was just slow and evolving, just basically opening my eyes to look in different directions to see what was really the truth and what wasn't.

RUSH: Truth.

That's the key.

Okay. That's cool. So it was the truth. The truth is a powerful thing, and that's what Obama can't deal with. That's what the Obama campaign can't deal with is the truth of who Romney is and who we are, and that means they are ripe for the picking.

END TRANSCRIPT

Link:

• Obama Thought He Won the Debate!

Rush Limbaugh: Clint got under Obama's skin

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times

Hollywood may be bashing Clint Eastwood's performance at the GOP convention, but Rush Limbaugh said Friday the reason is that he touched a nerve with leftist celebrities — and with the president himself.

Pointing to the photo the Obama camp tweeted after midnight showing the back of the president's head above the office chair in the Oval Office, Mr. Limbaugh said that proves the White House was worried. And he wondered whether it was Mr. Obama himself.

"It must have gotten to him because he tweeted at 12:30," Mr. Limbaugh said Friday on his radio program.
He also said the reason Hollywood types have panned the speech is because they couldn't find anything to shoot at in Mitt Romney's acceptance address, so they fired at whatever target they could find.

In his appearance just before Mr. Romney's formal acceptance speech Thursday night in Tampa, Mr. Eastwood held a mock conversation with the president, represented by an empty chair.
Link:

• Limbaugh: Clint got under Obama's skin

The End of Football Fast Approaches

From Rush Limbaugh:

RUSH: When I predicted, ladies and gentlemen, that the American left would soon begin its effort to ban professional football, I realized I'd be greeted with a bunch of catcalls. And I knew that I would be greeted with, "Come on, Rush, I've never heard anything more ridiculous! It is the national pastime. It is the most popular sport in the history of sports. It's the wealthiest. It's the richest. You gotta be crazy."

I said, "I know liberals. I know them! When the legal community gets involved, when the plaintiff's bar gets revved up, when lawsuits start flying about concussions and all that, it's over, folks. I'm telling you. It's just a matter of when." I thought it would be 15, 20 years. But over the weekend, George Will (no liberal he) submitted a column that was headlined in the New York Post, "Football's Growing Killer Problem."

Basically George Will in his column says that football is killing its players and cannot be fixed.

There is simply no way to change the game to make it safer and maintain the game as it is. You can't take head contact out of football. There's no way you can coach changes. For example, when I played football in high school, they always taught you to see what you hit. Do not lower your head as in a battering ram and go after somebody 'cause that's spinal and neck compression. That's how you break your neck. Don't do that. Always keep your head up and always see what you hit. Okay. That was to prevent broken necks.
Well, what that led to was more and more concussions.

Because guys are hitting each other with the crown of their helmet right there on the front of the lobe, sometimes in the head of another player. Or somebody gets kneed. His point is: You can't take this out of the game. You cannot stop people getting concussions in this game as the players are growing larger. He says, "In 1980, only three NFL players weighed 300 or more pounds." Last year, there were 352 players who weighed over 300, and three players who weighed over 350. And he says in his piece they're as fast as cats. I mean, these guys aren't lumbering, doddering old slobs. These are fast-moving and very quick. The kinetic energy that they are generating is something the human body can no longer tolerate. He talked about it on This Week Sunday as well. I'll pay you some sound bites of that when we get back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, look, folks, we're gonna talk about football here for a second, but I want you to hang in because this is cultural and this has to do with the future of the country.  This is not football prognostication, it's not X's and O's.  Stick with me on this.  It's important, and it matters.  Not just George Will.  George Will has a column basically saying that football is killing its players, and it can't be fixed.  He opens the column: "Are you ready for some football? First, however, are you ready for some autopsies?"

Now, there are a lot of other sports that feature concussions.  Boxing.  You know one of the fastest growing sports out there is the cage stuff, UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship.  That stuff's growing by leaps and bounds.  I even hear the Southern Poverty Law Center likes that sport.  Rugby has concussions.  Baseball has concussions.  There are injuries in every sport.  But I'm telling you it's open season on football.  That's the thing.  It's open season on football, and it's now become bipartisan.  It's crossed the partisanship divide with George Will weighing in on it.

Let's go to the audio sound bite.  He was on This Week. During the roundtable, George Stephanopoulos, said, "All of us were actually struck by what you wrote this week about football.  Pretty simple but staggering conclusion.  You write that football can't be fixed."  See, we've gotten to point, football needs to be fixed.  That's when it's over.  Football needs to be fixed.  Who says it needs to be?  Everybody playing the game knows what they're signing up for.  But, see, the liberals, "This is purposeful, disfiguring. This is permanent brain damage, and we're not a barbaric society.  We can't allow this. We can't have any risk."

Once football can't be fixed, once football can't be perfected -- I even heard Obama use the word, talking about our country and our Constitution.  It's imperfect, but it could be perfected.  That's liberal drivel.  The so-called march to perfection, as my buddy Mark Levin wrote, Ameritopia, which is a takeoff on utopia, this inexorable forward march to perfection.  But now they've determined football can't be perfected, can't be fixed.  Now, it's not just Will saying this.  People on the left came to this conclusion long before he wrote his piece.  It can't be fixed.  Who says it has to?  See, this is the point.  Somebody somewhere, I don't know if we're ever gonna find person zero in this, decided football needed to be fixed.  And I'll tell you who's gonna be responsible if this actually happens, as I'm predicting years from now, the media, the sports media, which thrives on the existence of the sport, I mean guys and women, sportswriters, telecasters, broadcasters, earn a living covering the sport, and they're the ones unwittingly -- well, I'll give you an example how.

One of the football websites that I read is ProFootballTalk.com.  It's a pretty good website.  It's run by a good guy named Mike Florio.  Now, you guys are all aware of the bounty punishments on the New Orleans Saints.  If you're not, I'm not gonna waste time bringing you up to speed.  Basically they suspended the coach for a year, maybe for life, because he was offering bounties to the players on his defense if they would commit injuries that forced guys out of the game, to be carted off, ambulanced out.  They've got it on tape.  There's arguments over whether it actually happened or whether  it was just motivational technique, but the coach's words are on tape so he's in trouble and a bunch of players have been suspended.  One of them is a guy named Jonathan Vilma, linebacker for the 'Aints suspended for a year.

Now, the Saints played the first preseason game last night against the Arizona Cardinals, and the Cardinals' first offensive series, their quarterback, Kevin Kolb, flushed out of the pocket, is tackled and a clean hit, pulled a muscle, chest injury or something, threw an interception, had to leave the game with an injury.  And you know how it's covered today?  That is the kind of legal hit that the Saints were being paid to make, according to the bounty.  The whole way the game is going to be covered now is going to change.  Here you had a tackle, nothing more than a tackle.  A guy pulled a muscle on a tackle, a quarterback flushed out of the pocket.  But, no, now it's gotta be reported.  That's the kind of hit that the Saints were legally engaging in and were exchanging dollars for.

The whole universe in which this game is now played and being reported on is forever changed.  The media will not be able to let this bounty thing go.  Every tackle, somebody on TV, "You think that would have been something that the Saints would have paid for?  Is that a legal hit or an illegal hit?  Do you think they were trying to put that guy out of the game?"  Once that stuff starts, there's no fixing that, either.  So here's George Will and Stephanopoulos says, "You write the game can't be fixed."

WILL:  The human body is no longer built for the kinetic energy of the National Football League and even further down to high school. In 1980, George, there were three NFL players over 300 pounds. Today there are three over 350 pounds, and 352 people on the 2011 rosters weighed more than 300 pounds. Over 20 yards, which is where a lot of football is played, these guys are as fast as cats, fast as running backs, and the kinetic energy is producing what is called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE, get used to that, because it's going to be the subject of lawsuits and other things. The crucial word is "chronic." Repeated, small but repeated, blows to the head, the brain floating in the pan in the skull, now we know causes early dementia and other problems.

RUSH:  This is a Sunday morning political show, roundtable, This Week with George Stephanopoulos.  This is the roundtable on a political Sunday morning show discussing all of this stuff in football.  That football can't be fixed.  The Constitution can be, huh?  The Constitution can be fixed.  Football can't be fixed.  Let's throw hockey into the mix here.  Why football, folks?  Why is nobody wanting to ban hockey or UFC or boxing because of concussions or anything else, why?  Why only football?  And why is it now being said football can't be fixed?  And, say, once the plaintiff's bar gets involved here, and that's the tort lawyers, and there are massive lawsuits that have been filed... I don't know that I'm ever gonna be able to watch this game the same now.  I'm gonna have to turn the sound off, I guarantee you.

The commentary of this game is forever changed now. Everything will be looked at in the context of the Saints bounty program.  "You think that woulda been a hit that woulda fallen under the jurisdiction of the commissioner to levy a penalty?  That hit, what if that were a bounty program involved here?"  And then the analyst will weigh in on this, and then the highlight show.  You wait 'til the first quarterback or anybody hit with a concussion gets taken out of the game, it's gonna be covered almost like a gangland shooting is covered, like a crime's been committed, and how can we sit here and watch this and enjoy it?

Then wait 'til they get the racial component in it. Wait 'til they figure out that 75% of players are black and therefore 75% of the damage is being incurred by blacks and guess who's being entertained by it and guess who owns the teams.  Wait 'til that component gets thrown in.  Folks, I tell you it's gonna happen sooner than I thought and you're gonna end up saying, "Well, Rush knew what he was talking about."  And just like in the old SUV days, "We thought Rush had finally gone over the edge, but he hadn't.  Knows exactly what he's talking about." Because I know liberals.

Now, I don't know what George Will's doing. (sigh) It just shows it's crossed the boundary now. It's just crossed the partisan divide. Here's Stephanopoulos: "Well, so what's to be done about it, George, if it can't be fixed 'cause right now there's no evidence the American public is wanting to turn away from the game."

Ah, that's right! Now, that's the next thing to happen, folks. The next thing to happen is for efforts to be made to get you not to watch this barbaric bloodbath. To compare you to someone who's no different than the ancient Romans who gathered in the Colosseum to watch the Christians given to the lions.

You'll be no different than those bloodthirsty people back then. "How dare you want to watch something like this? How dare you pay to see it? It's just like a car race. You go there to see these injuries, don't you, you reprobate fans?" Stephanopoulos: "George, there's no evidence the American public is ready to turn away.

So what can be done about it?" See, now "something" needs to be done. Okay, that's where we are. That's where liberals take us: Something has to be done. Football needs to be fixed, but it can't be.
Here's George Will's answer...

WILL: It'll start down below. It'll start at the small level of kids playing football in grade school and then in high school. We now, in our hyper-cautious parenting, put crash helmets on children riding tricycles.
PANEL: (snickering)

WILL: How many of these parents are gonna let their children go out and play football once they learn -- again -- the chronic, the cumulative effect of small-brain trauma?

RUSH: There you have it, folks. There you have it. Okay. Great while it lasted. I'm glad that I lived the bulk of my life when football was what it was.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This is Paul. Great to have you, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I wanted to comment on your take about the NFL. I think you may have it all wrong on this one, and rarely I disagree.

RUSH: I'm not surprised. I fully expect to be a lone wolf on this until it happens.

CALLER: This is my reasoning, Rush, and I'll tell you why. It's got to do with, they got a built-in protection with college football, and I say that because your instincts are right. There's gonna be a lot of hand-wringing and new ideas and liberal ideas and kook theories about changing football or getting rid of it. But the fact of the matter is college football is the huge source of revenue for the athletic department, and those athletic departments take that money and are giving it to sports like women's polo, table tennis, badminton.

RUSH: I understand all that.

CALLER: These colleges fly these girls teams around from state college to, say, Notre Dame for a badminton competition.

RUSH: I'm not predicting that the game's gonna be banned. That's not how this is going to happen. They're not gonna ban the game. What's gonna happen -- and I don't know how many years it's gonna take, but -- is it's going to eventually lose (slowly but surely) its fans, its audience. There's going to be a deterioration at all levels. I'll be happy to detail how I think this is going to manifest itself. It's already begun. It's already begun. "Football can't be fixed. There's something inexorably wrong about it." It does generate a lot of money, but, remember: The liberal left on college campi hate that.

But that's only a minor factor.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, I know I'm all alone on my prediction about what's gonna happen with football. And as the program unfolds, maybe if anybody asks me anything further about it, I'll tell you how I think this all is gonna happen. There's not gonna be a ban. That wouldn't work. Everybody knows it wouldn't work. There wouldn't be a ban. Fans love the game too much. So the people that want this game banned, the people that want it gotten rid of -- which is silly because it's a cash cow for so many people, but we're talking liberals, now. Look at how popular boxing used to be. Look at how popular smoking used to be.

Tort lawyers got involved in both. Tort lawyers are involved here now. Liberals are involved: "Game needs to be fixed. Game can't be fixed, though. Oh, it can't be fixed!" Mike Ditka says you can't take the hits out of it. Take the face mask off, Ditka says! You want to stop head injuries, take the face mask off. There are all kinds of ideas like that. That's not gonna satisfy. Once the game "needs to be fixed," that's it. So how are the people that want this game irreparably harmed going to pull it off?

I know how they're gonna do it.

They're gonna make you sick and tired of watching it.

And if you want further details, I'll provide 'em. But there's other stuff going on out there that I want to weigh in on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Okay, here, folks, right here.  Right here, just got it, Wall Street Journal.  Headline:  "Is It Time to Retire the Football Helmet?"  Yes, my friends, the march is on.

END TRANSCRIPT

Link:

• The End of Football Fast Approaches

The Sleeping Giant Awakens and Stands on Line for Chick-fil-A

From Rush Limbaugh:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Raleigh, North Carolina, this is Jay.  Thanks for the call, sir.  Great to have you here.

CALLER:  Thanks for having me on, Rush.

RUSH:  You bet.

CALLER:  I just wanted to touch base with you in regards to what I saw.  I went to a Chick-fil-A in Raleigh, North Carolina, today. It took me 20 minutes just to even get my order placed.  It was packed full of exciting people and a lot of people there just excited to be there.  I've been through that Chick-fil-A a lot.  I've never seen it so crowded.

RUSH: Let me tell you something.  I am being bombarded with e-mail from my website account, the Rush 24/7 member e-mail, with stories just like the one you're telling from all over this country about how crowded the Chick-fil-As are, about how long the lines are.  Get this, Jay, I just got an e-mail from a guy who said where he lives, that on the sign at the neighboring Wendy's, it says, "Today go to Chick-fil-A."  I don't know where this is, but I'll bet it's not the only example of it.  A local Wendy's is telling it's customers, "Today, we think you should go to Chick-fil-A," or something like that.  You know, it's happening all over, and it's political.

 

Rahm Emanuel and Thomas Menino, mayors of Chicago and Boston, made this political.  And now the people of this country, I'm gonna tell you, you're looking at a microcosm of what's gonna happen on November 6th.  You're looking at a microcosm of the Tea Party.  You are seeing that great silent majority, or the sleeping giant that our first caller talked about.  We have these commercials we do for FreedomWorks, people want to do more than vote.  They want to get involved.  They want to let everybody know how they feel and in what numbers they exist, and this is the latest opportunity they've got, and they are utilizing it.  Literally e-mails out the wazoo today talking about quarter mile long lines.  My cousin Andy in St. Louis sent me a picture of a Chick-fil-A in Des Peres, outside St. Louis, of jammed parking lots, traffic jams, people waiting.  Other stories about Chick-fil-A someplace ran out of breakfast at nine o'clock and immediately started serving lunch.

Now, meanwhile, in Chicago you got the mayor there, Rahm Emanuel, talking about, "Well, they don't represent Chicago values."  And a guy in Boston essentially saying the same thing.  And Ted Cruz, who was supposedly down by 13 points, coming back and winning huge.  Tea Party candidate, in Texas last night, sending a message of generational change to the Republican establishment.  Big Tea Party candidate.  Sarah Palin endorsed.  There is an explosion waiting to happen in this country.  People are fed up, and this is a sign.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  I'll tell you what's gonna happen on November 6th, Obama's gonna get Chick-fil-A'd himself.  He's gonna get Chick-fil-A'd, and folks, pictures continue to come in, and I'm asking myself, where are the news media satellite trucks today?  Where are all the man-on-the-street news reports of this?  I wonder if your local news will cover this tonight at five and 11, amidst all the murders and blood and everything else they cover, government corruption.  Wait, they don't talk about -- never mind.  But I'm just wondering, I mean, this is a major, major event.

"The owner of the largest Wendy's restaurants franchise in the world showed his support for competitor Chick-fil-A with a message on some signs in the Carolinas.  One sign in Columbia, South Carolina read 'We stand with Chick-fil-A' on Wednesday morning."



There's another one, I don't know where it is, I wasn't told where it is.  Let's see.  "Today we recommend Chick-fil-A."  Wendy's.  I don't know where it is.  Didn't say.  But I tell you, it is huge, and it's fascinating.  In a way, it's a giant Tea Party rally, and it's not being reported.  It's as if a million-and-a-half people showed up on the mall for a Tea Party gathering, and the media, "Nah-nah-nah-nah, the Park Service says 10,000," and never showed any pictures of it.

  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  I just got an on-the-spot, man on the street report from Cranbury Township, Pennsylvania.  The Chick-fil-A there has everything shut down.  And there are no TV trucks.  There is no media.  It's great to see.  People are sending me the pictures and so forth, what's going on out there.  And totally under the media radar, have no clue.  Many of them probably have no idea why this is happening.  Why would they be upset over what Rahm Emanuel said?  What was so bad about that?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is August 1st, folks.  August 1st, 2012.  It is our 24th anniversary here at the EIB Network, 24 years, starting our 25th year today of talking about and celebrating the wonder of America.  Also happening on August 1st, the Chick-fil-A revolution, supporting the right to voice your religious beliefs.  That's what this is about.  You have two Democrat mayors who essentially said, "Christians aren't desired in our towns."  You can strip away, you know, Rahm Emanuel, Chicago values and all that, all this is about is the fact that the head honcho Chick-fil-A is an open Christian.  He's out of the closet, and Rahm Emanuel said he's not welcome here, we don't want people like that, that's not Chicago.  So Christians are told, don't come to Chicago, don't come to Boston.  Well, guess what?  This is how they say, up yours.  This is how they say, in your face.

 

So on August 1st, the Chick-fil-A revolution supporting the right to voice your religious beliefs and August 1st also the beginning of Obamacare mandating that religious institutions violate their religious beliefs by providing birth control and drugs that facilitate abortion against their religious beliefs.  August 1st, what a profound day in history.

 

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Well, Fox News just showed a helicopter shot of a line of cars in front of a Chick-fil-A.  Did you miss it?  They just showed it.  It's the power of EIB.  Just a little aside, just a little aside.  Finally got a helicopter shot.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Barbara in Kansas City.  It's great to have you on the program.  Hello.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  This is so exciting for me to be able to speak with you.  My husband got me hooked on you during the Clinton administration, so for me this is such an honor.  I've tried for years to get through and never could.

RUSH:  Well, I'm glad you did today.

CALLER:  I am, too.  Anyway, I was driving by the Chick-fil-A, which is located at the Ward Parkway shopping center here in Kansas City --

RUSH:  I know where that is.  Yeah, I used to drive by there wishing I had the money to go in.

CALLER:  I burst out laughing.  It was packed.  There was a line out the door that was unbelievable.  Cars trying to get it from the Ward Parkway side, the state line side, the 86th Street side, from the Target parking lot.  It was just hilarious.  And I thought, this is so wonderful because there's been no media attention, and it's great that conservatives are able to get out there and say we have a voice.

RUSH:  There's no TV media?

CALLER:  No, there was no TV media.

RUSH:  Right, right.  Because I know KMBZ is all over it.

CALLER:  Yeah.  And I didn't see them there...

UPDATE: Vante Exec Bullies Chick-Fil-A Worker, Gets Fired

Link:

• The Sleeping Giant Awakens and Stands on Line for Chick-fil-A

Related:

• FNC's Shep Smith Slams 'Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day' As 'National Day of Intolerance'
• Cardinal George slams Chicago mayor’s comments on Chick-fil-A marriage flap
• No Building Permits for Opponent of Same-Sex Marriage

I Am Literally Sick Over This Obamacare Travesty

By Rush Limbaugh

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, folks. I now know what happened yesterday. I've had time to dig into this. Time that I did not have prior to yesterday's program and did not have during the program. And I can't tell you how sick I am. I am literally sick over what happened yesterday. I don't know how else to describe it. Literally sick. ...
A giant total fraud was perpetrated on this country yesterday. The Supreme Court  as an institution is forever tarnished. There are now no limits anywhere on the size, scope, the growth of government. We were the victims of a purposeful, intentional fraud yesterday. There is no way, were anybody in Washington concerned about the Constitution, there is no way Obamacare gets anywhere close to being law in this country. There is no way it even approaches constitutionality.  And the chief justice of the US Supreme Court  knew that.  He felt it was his duty, however, to save the legislation.

I don't even care about motivation. I don't care if it's because he wants the New York Times and Washington Post in love with him. I don't care if he wants to be the next John Marshall. I don't care.  All I know is that we were defrauded in front of our eyes, wide open.  We were taunted, defrauded, mocked, laughed at. I guess 5-4 court decisions are perfectly fine now. Oh yeah, hey, we'll take whatever we can get, we'll take it however we can get it. Even if they have to invent law, even if they have to rewrite a statute that was so poorly written, it wouldn't have gotten past a first grader who understood the Constitution.

Folks, having now learned what happened, and by the way, I can't take much more reading the faint praise for Justice Roberts. There are a lot of conservatives who are trying to find some comfort in all of this by pointing out that justice Roberts ruled that the Commerce Clause isn't a catchall that justifies anything Congress wants to do. "Hey, Rush, we got to look at what we won here." I understand that theory. You do want to try to take the best of things that you can. But this is theft!  Theft of liberty and freedom right in front of our eyes. Okay. So the Commerce Clause has been limited, so? Now we get to pay a tax for something we don't do. But it's worse than that. It really is akin to going into a 7-Eleven, and saying to the clerk, "No, I really don't want to buy any gum."

"Well, okay, tax on that is $2.35."

That's what's happened here. I see all these people running around now thinking they've got free health care, and for the next year-and-a-half that's what it's gonna look like. Michelle Obama, "Guess what, contraception is now free." She's got a list of all the things that are free. AP has a list of all the things that are free for everybody.  What happened here basically is that Justice Roberts stretched the limits to avoid being accused of activism.  He wanted to avoid being accused of activism. Activism, in this case, would have been finding the law as it is unconstitutional. So he succumbed to fear that doing that, upholding the Constitution, would have resulted in him being accused of activism. So what he did, he stretched the limits to avoid being accused of activism, and in the process, he became more activist than any justice in recent memory.

He actually wrote this. It makes going without insurance just another thing the government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. That's all it is here. He's got this law, Congress wants this law, the president wants this law, it's entirely unconstitutional. And they all knew this. Other than the four liberals, they all knew the whole thing was unconstitutional and Justice Roberts decided to rewrite it. He rewrote the legislation in a way that Congress never intended it. It would be like a judge making up for an incompetent lawyer in court and finding somebody who's guilty totally innocent just because the judge wanted to appear magnanimous. Or vice versa. It makes going without insurance just another thing the government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income.

Well, there's a big difference. You don't have to buy gasoline. And for 48% of the country, you don't have to earn an income. But we are all going to have to pay a tax for not doing something. And that starts a limitless universe of activity or lack of activity that can be taxed. There's a doctrine of law that says you don't reach constitutional issues if there is an alternative basis to decide the case. Do you recall we talked yesterday toward the end of the program, and I was admittedly confused because I hadn't had time to read the decision, nor read any analysis of it. Things were happening lickity split here, rat-tat-tat. But something yesterday that had me constantly confused was Justice Ginsburg's dissent. She's in the majority, what was she dissenting against?

Then after the program, I go home and I'm starting to do show prep for today's show, and I find out that a bunch of liberals are ticked off at Roberts, because of what he did with the Commerce Clause. So now I'm really confused. They won and they're complaining about Roberts and Ginsburg wrote a dissent. What was she dissenting from? So I looked into it. They're ticked off at Roberts, essentially she criticizes Roberts for violating the principle that you don't reach constitutional issues if there's an alternative way to decide the case.  So Roberts contended that the mandate was unconstitutional, but it could be upheld as a tax. And Ginsburg said, well, if you're going to do that, there's no need to even talk about the mandate and the ruling. If you're going to say that the mandate could be upheld as a tax, then you don't have to even get to the mandate, constitutionally, you don't have to talk about it. You don't have to rule it unconstitutional.
The four libs wanted this case on the mandate, not the tax increase. They wanted the Commerce Clause to be stretched to include unlimited government power. And they were ticked off at Roberts for limiting that. They say if you're going to find this as a tax case, leave it at that. So when I found that out, that really aroused my curiosity, because they thought Roberts then started answering an unnecessary question. And that, according to Ginsburg and the left, makes Roberts an activist judge. You know, my head is swimming, because all of this is gobbledy gook.  All of this is total BS, folks. And yes, I'm going to explain this as the program unfolds, I'm just setting the table here.

Roberts did not say this in his opinion, but he knows it. Congress and the president insisted up and down this was not a tax. That the only power that they were relying on here was the Commerce Clause power. That's how the law was presented.  That's how it was enacted.  That's how it was intended.  Obama ran around telling everybody there were no taxes in this, it was not a tax increase. In fact, people's taxes are gonna get cut. The legal controversy was the Commerce Clause. And Justice Roberts thus had to address it, but is an utter travesty.  It is an utter travesty that a member of the court, I don't care if it's a chief or whoever decides, that it's up to him to save an unconstitutional piece of legislation under the guise of not being an activist judge.

The Supreme Court wrote legislation, they rewrote this legislation to save it. In the real world, Realville, what used to be, what everybody thought they could count on, what everybody thought and hoped one more time they could depend on, even though we know we really can't, we learned it in Kelo, we learned it in McCain Feingold, we've learned it a lot. We can't count on the Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution, and that's why I'm sick. If we can't count on the Constitution being upheld in the Supreme Court, and furthermore, if the Supreme Court is going to take over the duties of the legislative branch and write legislation in order to save incompetent, unconstitutional, faulty work, then we've got pure fraud right before our very eyes.

Byron York went and looked at the first day of oral argument. When you hear this, you are going to be angrier than you even are right now. You're going to relive the first day of oral arguments where they talked about this as a tax. And the court allowed the government to argue both ways, that it was a tax one day, and they allowed the government to argue the next day that it wasn't a tax. First two days of oral arguments are where you find the answer to all the inexplicable questions here.

RUSH: Byron York wrote his piece at the DC Examiner yesterday: "No one knew it at the time, but the key moment in the Supreme Court Obamacare case came on March 26, the first day of oral arguments, when few people were paying close attention.  Before getting to the heart of the case, the justices first wanted to deal with what seemed to be a side issue: Was the penalty imposed by the individual mandate in Obamacare a tax?"

The first question the justices had for the lawyers: Is this a tax?

"If it was, the case would run afoul of a 19th century-law known as the Anti-Injunction Act, which said a tax cannot be challenged in court until someone has actually been forced to pay it." Well, the Obamacare taxes don't implement until 2014. So on the first day of oral arguments, if Obamacare is a tax, the court would have to throw it out because nobody had paid the tax yet. So the first day of oral arguments, the justices want to know, they asked the government, is this a tax? The government said no. Because everybody wanted the case tried, everybody wanted it adjudicated and they wanted it adjudicated now.

"Since the Obamacare mandate wouldn't go into effect until 2014, that would mean there could be no court case until then." So on the first day of oral arguments, the government said no, it's not a tax. Well, we could stop right there if we wanted to. We could stop after the first 30 minutes of oral argument, back on March 26th, skip everything that happened between then and yesterday, and then go to Justice Roberts' ruling, where he found it to be a tax.

That, of course, is not what happened. They kept arguing. "No one had challenged Obamacare on that basis; the challengers wanted the case to go forward now. The White House, having argued strenuously during the Obamacare debate that the penalty wasn't a tax, wanted to go ahead as well. So the court, on its own, tapped a Washington attorney to make the argument that the penalty was a tax," just to cover their bases.  The government wouldn't say it was a tax. The anti-Obama lawyers would not say it was a tax. So the Supreme Court went out and they brought in, they hired their own lawyer to argue that it was a tax. The court on its own tapped a Washington attorney to make the argument the penalty was a tax, and, therefore, the case should not go ahead.

"'The Anti-Injunction Act imposes a "pay first, litigate later" rule that is central to federal tax assessment and collection,' said the lawyer, Robert A. Long, on that first day of oral arguments. 'The Act applies to essentially every tax penalty in the Internal Revenue Code. There is no reason to think that Congress made a special exception for the penalty imposed by [Obamacare].'"  So the lawyer hired by the court affirmed it's not a tax. Nobody in the regime thought it was a tax. Nobody in Congress thought it was a tax. And nobody in Congress made a special exception for the penalty imposed by Obamacare as a tax. It was all in the Commerce Clause.

"After Long made his case, it fell to the administration's lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, to argue that no, the mandate was not a tax, and therefore the case was not subject to the Anti-Injunction Act." And that's what happened on the first day. The government hired a lawyer to make the case it was a tax; and Verrilli, the Obama lawyer, made the case that it wasn't. This is just so the justices could have arguments on the table that they could then decide.

"At the same time, everyone knew that the next day, when Verrilli planned to argue that the mandate was justified under the Constitution's Commerce Clause, he had as a backup the argument that it was also justified by Congress' power to levy taxes -- in other words, that it was a tax.  Justice Samuel Alito saw the conflict right away.  'General Verrilli, today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax,' Alito said. 'Tomorrow you are going to be back, and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax. Has the court ever held that something that is a tax for the purposes of the taxing power under the Constitution is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act?'  'No,' answered Verrilli.  At the time, some observers found the whole thing a little boring; the real action would come the next day, when the court got to the question of whether the Commerce Clause could be stretched to include the individual mandate."

But the first day is where the fraud happened. The first day the government says it isn't a tax. The second day, the government, as a backup, said, "If you don't like the Commerce Clause, we also think it's a tax." The government was allowed to argue this both ways. The first way they were allowed to argue that it wasn't a tax so that the case would go on. The next day they were allowed to argue as a back stop, if the commerce part of it fell apart, that it was a tax. But a lot of these observers who were bored on the first and second days of oral arguments were then shocked yesterday when the chief justice rejected the Commerce Clause argument and ended up "agreeing with Verrilli that the mandate simultaneously was and was not a tax, and that therefore Obamacare would stand. Roberts joined the court's four liberal justices, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan, who seemed prepared to uphold Obamacare under any circumstances.

"Roberts' sleight of hand drove his conservative colleagues nuts. 'The government and those who support its position on this point make the remarkable argument that [the mandate] is not a tax for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act, but is a tax for constitutional purposes,' wrote dissenters Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. 'That carries verbal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of the sophists.'"

So from the get-go, this case was allowed to be sloppy, bent, shaped, flaked, and formed, however ultimately the left wanted it to be in order for it to be found constitutional or good. And, by the way, on this Commerce Clause business, folks, they didn't limit anything. They said Obamacare is not permissible under the Commerce Clause. But they didn't limit the Commerce Clause per se here. The anti-injunction act says that you cannot do a court case over a tax until it's been collected, levied and collected. Well, the tax hasn't been levied and collected. And by gosh, if the chief justice himself didn't find that the whole thing is kosher as a tax increase, a tax increase on what we don't buy, and a point that I made yesterday that I want to make again, when you pay taxes, where do you pay the money? Government gets the money. These taxes are gonna be paid to insurance companies. Is that even a tax?

You have to buy health insurance. If you don't, there's a fine. So the money that you're spending that you otherwise wouldn't, the tax, being spent with insurance companies. The tax anti-injunction act was codified title 26 US code. It was enacted in 1867. It is the law. It's never been found to be unconstitutional. The Obama administration was allowed to argue it both ways. So that however it ended up being most beneficial to them was the way the court was going to decide.

So we, who cannot be protected from the political choices we make, spend all this time debating and arguing against a piece of legislation based on the Commerce Clause. The court admits they can't find it constitutional, so guess what? We're gonna make this thing legal by calling it a tax increase. Government can do that. There's a reason nobody predicted this outcome. And the reason is nobody was thinking outside the boundaries of the law.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: My friend, Andy McCarthy, has a piece on this at PJMedia.com. His headline is: "Obamacare Ruling: Pure Fraud and No Due Process." Here's how he opens: "Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court decided that Americans have no right to due process. Indeed, the court not only upheld a fraud perpetrated on the public -- it became a willing participant." That's exactly right! This whole law has been presented fraudulently. The whole thing was a fraud.

Obamacare passed in Congress through trickery.

 

They used reconciliation.

They tried all kinds of tricks.

They were even thinking of "deeming" it to pass.

There was the Cornhusker Kickback.

They tried all kinds of things that ultimately didn't work because the people weren't gonna put up with it. It was upheld by the Supreme Court through trickery. "Had Obamacare..." This is Andy writing. "Had Obamacare been honestly presented as a tax, or had the court acted properly by striking it down as an illegitimate use of the commerce power and telling Congress that if it wanted to pass the bill as a tax it would have to pass the bill as a tax, our dire financial straits might have forced this much-needed debate about the limits of congressional welfare power.

"We have now lost that opportunity through fraud: Fraud in the legislative action, and fraud in the judicial review. Due process would not allow this to be done to a criminal, but the Supreme Court has decided that Americans will have to live with it." The administration presents a case to the Supreme Court that is based entirely on an individual mandate that is said to be legal because of the Commerce Cause. If Congress had wanted to pass a bill that got the same thing done with taxes, it would have done that.

It didn't do that on purpose!

They didn't want to go anywhere near tax increases on this.

Obama was out promising tax cuts to everybody. He promised lower premiums, greater health care coverage and treatment. There was no way that they wanted to talk about this as a tax, a tax increase, or anything of the sort. So the court should have adjudicated this on the basis of what was in the bill -- period -- and they didn't. Again, the chief justice wrote what I'm gonna read to you here: "Under my theory, the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance. Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income."

"Under my theory, the mandate's not a legal command to buy insurance."

That's the stretch that he had to make in order to get to where he ended up. "Under my theory, the mandate's not a legal command to buy insurance." It most certainly the hell was! And that's all it was. And that's not constitutional. It was a "command" by the federal government that we buy something. They don't have that power! The chief said, "Eh, it's not a legal command. It just makes going without insurance another thing the government taxes, which the government can do, like buying gasoline or earning income."

(sigh)

It makes you sick.

It just makes me sick.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Roberts says that he thought it was his duty to save the Act no matter what. It was his duty to save the Act no matter how bad it was. He had to write it to make it legal. Sorry. I feel like the police chief in my town just had a press conference and has announced that the police force will now be assisting criminals in breaking into my property. That is how I feel.

END TRANSCRIPT

Link:

• I Am Literally Sick Over This Obamacare Travesty

Related:

• Mark Levin Eviscerates the Obamacare Ruling
• What Happened to John Roberts?

What Happened to John Roberts?

By Rush Limbaugh

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  I want to go back to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites.  Our archives.  By the way, I think this is important.  Doesn't mean anything now.  It does not have the force power, but the four judges, justices who dissented -- Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy -- made it plain in their dissent that this was nothing constitutional about this act.  They found nothing in it.  They plainly said, in their dissent, the whole thing should have been tossed out.  You can't have a greater divide than what we had.  You've got the four libs, who, it's never even considered that they might change their tune.  And the chief justice, who we know now I think is a creature of the Washington establishment, a creature of the notion that government is the center of the universe.  It's pretty obvious.  But the four justices who dissented, they didn't even want to get into the idiosyncrasies of the majority opinion.  They found the whole thing tossable.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, a lot of court experts are saying that the dissent actually reads like a majority opinion but with criticism of the actual majority tacked on at the last minute. In other words, the dissent is just... Again, this is speculation. These so-called court experts are looking. They are now reading both opinions and they say, "This dissent sounds like it was the majority opinion, like it started out as the majority opinion." And some of these Court Watchers are now saying, "It looks like Roberts was somehow convinced to switch sides along the way."

Ah, this is just gossip. It's interesting for the sake of it. But back in May, there were rumors floating around relevant legal circles that a key vote was taking place and that Roberts was feeling tremendous pressure from unidentified circles to vote to uphold the mandate. And that's all they were. They were just rumors. I don't know who was applying the pressure and don't even know if it's true. It's just gossip. This is the kind of stuff you can expect a lot of in the aftermath. (interruption)

What do you mean, "No"? (interruption) Well, okay. Snerdley reminds me... (interruption) You're talking about Leahy? Senator Leahy went to the floor of the Senate and did... Eh, you might say he threatened Justice Roberts. There were senators that went to the floor. It was unprecedented. There were really intimidating things said. We reported on it this week, in fact. There were intimidating things said about and to Justice Roberts. And I remember the reaction, "Ah, he's not gonna care about that, Rush! Come on, now. He's the chief justice Supreme Court. That stuff happens all the time."

You're gonna be reading about this kind of gossip. You probably will see it intensify as the afternoon and evening wear on that Roberts switched. This is a theory. Remember, now: Everybody, everybody thought the mandate was going down. Everybody did! The media was sure. In fact, the media was writing stories on what a worthless court this was. Roger Simon of Politico. It was really intense. All last week and early in this week, everybody thought it was history. That's why there was utter shock.

By the way, this wasn't the only decision. Are you ready for this? The Supreme Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act today. Do you know what the Stolen Valor Act is? Essentially the Supreme Court just said it's perfectly fine to lie about medals and awards that you receive in combat. "The Supreme Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act on Thursday, saying that the First Amendment defends a person's right to lie -- even if that person is lying about awards and medals won through military service. ...

"In its 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court justices said [today] that as written, the act is too broad and ignores whether the liar is trying to materially gain anything through his or her false statement, which would be more akin to fraud." So, if your neighbor starts running around saying he got the Medal of Freedom, Medal of Honor, the Purple Heart, whatever, it's perfectly fine. He can go make a fake medal and he can hang it around his neck. It's perfectly fine. No problem. Now, if he tries to make money off it...

Well, no. He can still do it. Justices said that only if these liars were trying to profit materially would they have struck down the law. But the First Amendment gives them the total right, the freedom to lie about it.

(interruption) I know. You CAN make it up! You can literally go out and you can make it up. Purple Heart, Medal of Freedom, Medal of Honor, whatever. (interruption) See, if you go out... (interruption) I don't know. There might be "hope for Sandusky." It depends. I don't know if they'll legalize pedophilia or not.

We'll have to wait and see if it's in the health care bill.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: When I said "court watchers" earlier, I should have cited it's a blog. The Volokh Conspiracy. There's a blogger who is talking about the pressures that were put on John Roberts to change his vote. They're analyzing this, and through much of the dissent, they've got Scalia referring to "the dissent," and there were notes that Ginsburg was writing the dissent. I remember reading earlier in the week that Justice Ginsburg was writing the dissent. The clear impression from court watchers was that the mandate was struck down.

And now there's a theory that somebody got to John Roberts. I really hate even passing this on. When I say, "Somebody got to John Roberts," one of the guesses is Obama's public assertions that the court was going to marginalize itself and become irrelevant is something people were speculating might have influenced Roberts. Not that somebody threatened him. I don't want anybody putting words in my mouth. It's just going around a blog and it will probably be amplified on as the day goes on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It doesn't matter as to the outcome whether or not Chief Justice Roberts was intimidated and threatened, but it does matter. Finding out conclusively won't change anything, but it will be quite eye-opening for people if it is established that the public intimidation of the chief justice by Obama and senators and so forth resulted in a changed vote. That will de-validate the court in terms of people's respect more than any decision could, whatever it would be.

Time will tell.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I mentioned earlier the Volokh Conspiracy.  It's a blog that circulates in legal circles, and apparently, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of people are doing what you and I are doing.  "What in the name of Sam Hill happened here?"  It was thought, and nobody knew for sure, but there were tea leaves, and I'm an expert now in the tea business.  I know tea leaves, and there were tea leaves out there that the mandate was going down. The White House thought it was going down.  The media thought it was going down.  And, in fact, the first announcement today was the mandate was ruled unconstitutional.  That was the first thing that got reported.

And then it was a few short seconds later that the first "uh-oh" came.  Wait a minute, the mandate's unconstitutional, but the whole thing stands because Chief Justice Roberts is calling it a tax?  So after the shock wore off, people started trying to figure out what in the heck happened.  And all the news networks, even CNN got it right, reported that the mandate was struck down.  Fox reported it was struck down. AP reported it struck down. Washington Post reported the mandate was struck down.  It was a cruel trick to play on the American people.  Mandate struck down, and mere seconds later, "uh-oh."

Now, the Volokh Conspiracy.  It's a post by gentleman named David Bernstein.  Scalia’s dissent, at least on first quick perusal, reads like it was originally written as a majority opinion (in particular, he consistently refers to Justice Ginsburg’s opinion as 'The Dissent')."  Earlier this week there were stories that Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsburg was writing the dissent.  That did leak.  And these guys are referencing it here at the Volokh Conspiracy blog, and they say that in his dissent, Scalia consistently refers to Justice Ginsburg's opinion as the dissent.

"Back in May, there were rumors floating around relevant legal circles that a key vote was taking place, and that Roberts was feeling tremendous pressure from unidentified circles to vote to uphold the mandate. Did Roberts originally vote to invalidate the mandate on Commerce Clause grounds, and to invalidate the Medicaid expansion, and then decide later to accept the tax argument and essentially rewrite the Medicaid expansion to preserve it? If so, was he responding to the heat from President Obama and others, preemptively threatening to delegitimize the Court if it invalidated the ACA? The dissent, along with the surprising way that Roberts chose to uphold both the mandate and the Medicaid expansion, will inevitably feed the rumor mill," which it is doing.

Now, I want to be very careful, 'cause none of this matters in terms of the outcome today.  If people found out, if they could prove that Roberts changed his vote because of intimidation, it won't change anything about this outcome.  And I don't think anybody is ever gonna be able to firmly establish that this happened.  So I don't want to be misunderstood here.  But this decision is so shocking to people.  Folks, there's nothing constitutional about this law.  It is utterly shocking.  What happened today is disgraceful, and that's why the rumor mill is ginning up, because people are trying to find a logical explanation because the Constitution effectively didn't exist today when this decision was announced.

And the people trying to figure this out are obviously going to look into the rumor mill and try to find some way of explaining it.  It's not gonna change anything.  So you might say it's pointless to focus on it, other than it being gossipy and interesting in that regard.  However, if it were ever confirmed as true that a chief justice, any justice, was motivated by virtue of threat and intimidation to change a vote, if the threat of intimidation and whatever else can result in vote changing or a vote, period, then of course you'd have to conclude that essentially you got organized crime running the show, not the Constitution.  Organized crime definitionally, not literally.

There's another blog out there that is rolling with the same theory.  It's called Legal Theory Blog, and they've come up with the same thought.  And they've got an article: "Evidence that the Votes Shifted After Conference (Initial Vote to Declare Mandate Unconstitutional)." They're looking at this.  And, by the way, all of this is permissible.  They can vote, change their votes whenever they want, up until the time of announcement, or whatever limit they place on themselves.  The justices in the court are not bound by their first votes, by their original votes.  It has a larger meaning, obviously, and it takes me back to Artur Davis.  I'll read you the second paragraph of Artur Davis' e-mail today.

"But there is a larger story: this result shows the left’s continuing capacity to shape elite opinion by marginalizing positions that roughly half the country holds."  What he means, conservatism has been marginalized to be kookville.  "Just as the left has caricatured opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion as retrograde and extreme, it just pulled off the same feat in the context of Obamacare: the case was made, and Roberts bought it, that a Court that has struck down 169 congressional statutes would somehow be dangerously activist if it added a 170th one to the mix. Its an undemocratic, disingenuous sleight of hand that the left is practicing, but it is winning: the cost is that it only widens the gap between Middle America and the elite."

So his point here, is that whatever intimidation was used on Roberts, it was, "Hey, Judge, do you really want to be thought of as a nutcase kook right-wing extremist?"  And that's what Artur Davis said, whatever the pressure was, and if there was such pressure, that's how it manifested itself.  Anyway, folks, I feel nervous even mentioning all this stuff to you because it gets into the area of pure speculation and gossip, and I want you to understand that that's what it is.  And there's a reason for it.  This is inexplicable to people, and they're trying to understand it.  What in the hell happened here?  What happened to the Constitution?  That's why all of this is being visited the way it is.  But no matter what the speculators come up with, it's not gonna change the outcome today.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Look, let's cut to the chase here, folks. The reason that I'm nervous with all this speculation that Chief Justice Roberts "caved" and who "got to him" and who intimated him is simple. The reason I'm having trouble with this is that I don't think that's what happened. I believe I mentioned earlier this week (it might have been yesterday or the day before) that I had been warned years ago. I was in a conversation about justices on the court and how they respond to public pressure in the Washington Post Style Section.

You know, the usual obligatory way you go and discuss the way that the media tries to influence outcome of votes on the Supreme Court. And all those conversations centered around Justice Kennedy as the swing vote. And I was warned, "It's not Kennedy you have to look out for. It's Justice Roberts." I can't tell you who told me. No, no! I know who it is. It's not that I've forgotten. It's that I can't mention it. I think really what happened here is not a cave. I don't think there was a cave, folks.

I think Chief Justice Roberts is establishing his legacy. I think it's what he wanted to do. I think this is his imprimatur. This is The Roberts Court, like we had The Warren Court and we had The Rehnquist Court.

This is The Roberts Court. This is his stamp on it. I know it's fun to think about the intimidation that might have occurred and who succeeded with it and so forth. There's also... I don't want to mention any names on this, either, because I don't mean to embarrass anybody. But the other thing going on that you might have seen or heard yourself is this:

"Hey, wait a minute, Rush! Rush, wait a minute! Didn't this tax increase originate in the Senate? Aren't the taxes in the Obamacare from the Senate and therefore they're unconstitutional?" Well, where are we gonna go on that? We gotta go back to where? The very same court that just said it's okay! So what do we do? Okay, even if that's a valid point. I understand this kind of stuff is gonna happen on a day like this. People are grasping at straws. They're trying to look at something, anything they can grab onto to explain this and to give us some hope that we can reverse this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have my wits about me, folks.  I always do.  I am not sidetracked. I am not diverted. I am not distracted, nor am I intimidated.  I'm gonna tell you exactly what happened here, and it's not what the rumor, speculation is.  I understand that.  This decision's inexplicable to people.  They're desperately trying to come up with an explanation that would fit in their minds.  "My gosh, what happened here?"

Here's what happened.  The Supreme Court, a majority of the Supreme Court, found Obamacare unconstitutional.  They found the mandate unconstitutional.  The chief justice, John Roberts, kicked into activist mode and found a way around that.  I don't care if he found a way around it because he was intimidated by Obama, or Patrick Leahy, or somebody in the media.  I don't care.  Because I don't think he was.  I think he did what he wanted to do.  He has sided with the liberal justices more often than not in previous decisions.  I just throw that out as a statistic, not as evidence.  I think he's building a legacy.  This is what he wanted to happen.  He found a way for it to happen.  And so now, folks, it's game on.  And I know some of you may get sick and tired of always being in this position. Why is it always game on?  Why is it always us that have to do -- well, it's the way of the world. It's simply the reality we face today.

We are up against people who believe in tyranny.  We are up against people who do not want there to be individual freedom and liberty in this country.  That's what we face.  We don't face people who like a level playing field with the will of the people being the determining factor.  It's not the people we're up against.  We're up against people who do not like the US Constitution. We're up against people who do not like this country as founded.  We're up against people who want to change it.  They have not liked it for a long time or they've never liked it.  We don't have time to try to analyze why.  We don't have time to try to figure out how they ended up being this way.

We now are governed by a monstrous assault on our personal liberty and freedom.  We are governed by it.  We are living under its thumb.  Jackboot.  And it is now time to wrap this monstrosity around Obama's head.  He will not tell anybody what this bill means.  It's up to us.  And we can't even count on Romney to do this.  All we can do is hope that he gets it right.  We have to tell people what this bill is, and we have to be able to show them and tell them that's what this bill is and explain it.  This bill is death panels.  This bill is massive taxes on our behavior.  We have to be able to explain that what happened today does not mean free health care for the poor.  If anything, it means the poor will lose their health care, what with this Medicaid expansion.

We have death panels now.  We have massive taxes, tax increases.  We have taxes on our behavior.  We have a tax if we choose not to have health insurance.  You young people who don't want to buy health insurance because you don't need it yet.  Too bad.  If you don't, you pay a fine, and there are 16,000 IRS agents newly hired who are going to be enforcing this thing.  There are 2700 pages in this monstrosity.  There are going to be regulations that haven't even been dreamed up yet because, as the bill states countless times, "As the secretary shall determine."  The secretary of Health and Human Services can pretty much write the law as he or she goes.

There will be denial of care.  Not everybody's gonna get health care, whether they're insured or not.  It's gonna be determined that some people's health care is not worth the cost, either the disease is too far advanced or the disease is too far advanced and they're too old, or perhaps they're not of the right political party.  Don't you dare discount that.  We are up against people who want us -- Artur Davis is exactly right -- marginalized.  Half of this country they want marginalized as extreme wacko alien kooks.  These are people that would be happy to deny your grandmother health coverage if you didn't vote for Obama, and I am not exaggerating.  These are people who itch, bureaucrats and so forth, who itch for that kind of power over people.  This law provides it.

Rationing, it's all part of the mix.  We're $16 trillion in debt.  Not everybody's gonna get health care.  And I don't care what Obama says, not everybody's gonna get the best health care.  Not everybody's gonna get equal health care.  Not everybody's gonna get equal insurance.  Nothing Obama says about this has very much relationship to the truth.  You're not gonna hear about any of this stuff that I'm telling you.  But it is game on.  We're gonna have price controls, because premiums and things, prices of health care are going to skyrocket.  And these experts, these statists, the people who want total dominion and control over your life are gonna be shocked, because some of these people are true believers and they really believe all the propaganda.

They believe it's gonna be cheaper. They believe it's gonna get more plentiful, and when it doesn't they are going to be shocked and stunned and they're not going to understand it, just like when every other program of theirs fails, they're clueless.  All they want is credit for their good intentions.  But they're gonna have to deal with the failure. They're gonna have to deal with the problems this bill creates.  So there will be rationing.  There will be price controls.  There will be massive deficits.  And all of this needs to be wrapped around the head of Barack Obama and every Democrat running for reelection who supported this thing, which is every one of 'em.  That's where we are.  That's what this is, and now this precedent, set by this ruling today, where the government can tax behavior, not just your income, not just your user fee at a public park or a federal park, or not just your gasoline tax.  Now sky's the limit.  Whatever they want to tax, they can.  That was just affirmed via this decision today.

Now, I must say there are some people out there... It doesn't matter who. And this is quite natural, too. I understand this psychologically. There are people who are trying to point out positive aspects in the Roberts ruling. There are people who are saying, "We gotta be very careful, Rush! John Roberts is a George Bush appointee. We don't want to dump on John Roberts." Um, sorry. This is an appalling, disgraceful decision -- and it's going to be remembered as such.

This decision, this ruling originally was found to be unconstitutional. According to the Commerce Clause, it was unconstitutional. And what happened was the chief judge found a way, going activist, to make sure this bill survived. And it was the chief justice who accepted a very little used administration argument that, "Hey, it's tax," even though we played the tape where Obama said it wasn't a tax. He went to the mat telling George Stephanopoulos in 2009, "It's not a tax increase, George."

They knew that if this bill were sold as a tax increase, it'd fail.

Obama was out there saying, "Nobody who makes under $200,000 a year will see their taxes go up as long as I'm president." Everybody's taxes go up and sometimes monstrously high here. Obama went to the end of the world trying to convince people this is not a tax increase. And when the mandate was running into trouble, then they tried to say, "Well, maybe it is a tax." They sent their little Verrilli up to the court to argue, "It could be a tax." They weren't excited about it. They didn't want to sell it that way.

It turns out they didn't have to. The chief judge found it! He said (summarized), "You know what? I'm just gonna call it a tax. The government can do that. They can't make everybody buy health insurance with the mandate, but they can with the tax code." That's what happened today. It's an appalling, disgraceful decision.

END TRANSCRIPT

Link:

• What Happened to John Roberts?