This was just a portion of Rush Limbaugh's comments at the Milken Institute Forum. I'll post some more lines from this conference below the video. Many of his comments would have been hilarious, were they not, sadly, true. First allow Rush to set the scene:
Last night I was in Los Angeles, flew out there right after the program yesterday -- actually, Beverly Hills. Michael Milken, who is a friend of mine... runs the Prostate Cancer Foundation... Milken has this thing every year called the Milken Institute Global Forum, and he brings in people from all over the world, some of the wealthiest tycoons in the world, and it's a three-day seminar, and there are programs, speakers, panel discussions all day long. Last night was a debate, and the participants in the debate were Harold Ford, Jr. of Tennessee, and Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, and the speaker of the California assembly and myself with Ed Gillespie, who is the former chairman, Republican National Committee, and he was the assistant to George W. Bush after Karl Rove left.
On the audience:
These are the Masters of the Universe. These are some of the most achieved, some of the most accomplished financial and business people from all over the world, including here in the United States. And they've been corrupted, these Masters of the Universe. Not all of them, but many of them, I could tell by the applause I got. They don't really dig many of Obama's policies, but they love him, and they don't react well to criticism of him. It was disappointing, in a way, because there's a definite left-ward tilt in the corporate world, not just corporate America, but in the corporate world, and these are the people this man is targeting. For example, last night, one of the comments I made, I said, "Look what's happened to the hospitality business. Obama is actually urging people not to go to Las Vegas." Well, now, were there people in that room last night who own hotels in Las Vegas and somebody told me after the evening was over, somebody came and said, you know, somebody shouted "screw Las Vegas" when you said that. So here you have a room of highly achieved tycoons who have the same attitude as people who have fallen victim to class envy in the middle class or whatever.
Here are some more quotes from Rush's comments, the first comes from the video:
And the first sound bite here, the moderator had asked everybody to rate Obama's first hundred days. Harold Ford gave Obama an A-minus, Willie Brown gave Obama a straight A, and then they asked me for my grade, and this is how it started. RUSH ARCHIVE: Barely a D. (laughter and cheers) Now, look, we have been chatting backstage before we came out and it's very lively, and right now we're all friends. (laughter) LUNTZ: (snickering) RUSH ARCHIVE: But these three people are all involved in electoral politics. That's their business. And I'm not. You know, I look at these in an entirely different way. (laughter) No. Getting an audience and getting votes are two different things. I don't pander. I don't lie. I don't say things I don't believe to get an audience... I do not want the federal government and the United Auto Workers owning General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford. (applause and cheers) In fact, I'm afraid if you go buy a car in the next six months you're going to automatically be registered as a Democrat. (laughter) It's going to come with an Obama hood ornament and a built-in bumper sticker that you can't remove. (laughter) And you're going to go out and all the union guys are going to be the salespeople. If you don't buy it's either your kneecaps or your signature. (laughter) I don't want the federal government owning the banks and the financial system. (applause)
Later:
RUSH: I believe that Barack Obama comes from a life experience that believes that the wealthy, the accomplished, and the achieved come by their gains in an ill-gotten way, and they need to have it taken away and redistributed. See, I believe the smallest minority in the world is the individual. And if you don't respect the individual, then you really can't say you're for minority rights. We're all different. We were all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. The Democrat Party is not supporting any of those three. They're not supporting life. They're not supporting liberty. We're losing liberty every day. Again, the audience here was 1,500 to 2,000 of the wealthiest tycoons from all over the world. In that bite you could hear, you could hear a pin drop in there, right? Because I will guarantee you, they're not hearing these kinds of things either at things like this or within even their own closed circles.
More:
RUSH: This belief, though, that somehow the rich take what they have from the middle class and the poor is just silly. Look at what President Obama has done to the hospitality business. Talk to anybody in Las Vegas. He's urging people not to go! CEOs are afraid to fly their planes 'cause they're going to be tattled on. So if you have this class envy that is so popular -- that all we're here to do in America is get even with those who have achieved -- then this administration is for you.
On AIG execs:
RUSH: These bonuses, folks, are irrelevant! It was 100-some-odd million compared to $176 billion they were given. Where did that money go? ...This business of harping on the achievers is nothing but pure political class envy that is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of American voter, which right now more and more of them are having to be unemployed. (applause) This is about building the Democrat Party. It's not about building America. All this talk... There is not one government program of any size that has worked. We started the War on Poverty; we still got it at the same percentage. We have started the Great Society. None of these programs work, but we're not allowed to say that. We're not allowed to look at the results. We're supposed to look at the good intentions of the people who do them. This country is in debt to the point that people who have not yet been born are broke! (laughter) We have tried spending money to fix problems, and it never works. And the premises here, "What would you do different? What would you do with the TARP money?" Why do we need TARP money? (applause) "What would you do with the stimulus?" Who says government can stimulate the private sector? It cannot. Government stimulates the Democrat Party. (laughter) Nationalizing businesses, nationalizing banks is not a solution for this Democrat Party; it's the objective. And that's not what this country was founded on, and it's not what made this country great, and it's not how individuals and entrepreneurs prosper.
On the tax code:
RUSH: For Barack Obama, the purpose of the tax code is to take money away from people so that they become more dependent on government. Pure and simple. What's the proper amount of taxation? As little as possible to inspire people to work their asses off, so they will work hard and pay as much taxes as their rate requires. (applause) Ronald Reagan takes office 1980, '81. The top marginal tax rate is 70%. Total take to the Treasury, $500 billion. Eight years later, the top rate's down from 70 to 28%; the take to the Treasury is $950 billion. Look at the Bush tax cuts. They generated revenue for Washington. They also created individual liberty and freedom and entrepreneurism. That is what the Democrat Party doesn't like. The more people freed, the more people entrepreneurial, the more people who are independently achieving, the less chance you have to control them... Look, we're losing 600,000 jobs a month. They're saying it's not going to improve until we get to 10%. Would somebody tell me how an unemployed person contributes to deficit reduction? It just doesn't happen. So all of this is just... We're 180 degrees out of phase here in terms of, "What's the goal? Raise revenue to run the government. How best to do that? Turn the American people loose.
On foreign relations:
RUSH: It really pains me to see the president of the United States go around the world and apologize for this country hoping that... (applause) I know what he's trying to do. Barack Obama thinks that -- and a lot of Democrats think -- the country is unjust and immoral, has been for a long time, compounded under Bush. I know what the template is. And that if we just run around and say, "Look, we're different. We're morally superior. We're better people. We're different now. You can trust us. We're not from the old country here that was racist, sexist, bigoted, and so forth and so on," and I think all that does is convey weakness to our enemies. I think it generates laughter. I think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's insane. He's sworn to blow Israel off the map. He believes -- and his fundamentalist religious beliefs are what propel him. The idea that we can somehow change Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attitude towards us by having talks is ridiculous.
And finally, a radio caller sums it up best:
CALLER: Yes, I was at the conference last night. My husband is there right now, and when he'd heard that you were on the panel he called and I raced up yesterday afternoon... And we were at a table of ten people. Our host and hostess, she was from Russia; he was from Budapest. And probably out of the ten of us, four were conservatives, the others were liberals... But when you were speaking, of course, the liberals at the table several times were booing, and my one Russian hostess was cheering, and I was a little bit more conservative with my clapping, because I didn't want to embarrass my husband, who is not as outgoing a conservative as I am. And she just said, "Noni, don't hold back. I was in (socialist) Russia... I wasn't able to get my feelings out, and I lived in New York and I was intimidated by liberals," and she said, "No more." So I just really enjoyed it, Rush. You did a great job.
Democrats tauntingly say that Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. Wish it were so.
Recent Comments