"Semantic games and distractions, self-delusions that create confusion are not gonna get us anywhere....We cannot defeat Obamacare if we do not explain how it destroys the current health care system and the individual....The line that exists between us and them, the other side, could not be more clear. If our side would just stop blurring it."
7/3/12, "These Clueless Republicans Must Stop Willfully Ignoring the Substance of This Unconstitutional Obamacare Disaster," Rush Limbaugh transcript
"If this keeps going this way, we're going to lose it all, folks. Unless some people get their heads in the game and focus on what really happened here and what really is happening, we're going to go down the tubes....This silly debate about whether it's a penalty or a tax. Looking for silver linings. What the heck does it matter? All that is irrelevant! And you've got Romney's guy going on MSNBC saying, "No, no, no...! We don't think what the court said is a tax. It's a penalty."
This is the guy who made the statement about, "Well, you know, our policies are Etch-A-Sketch. We got an Etch-A-Sketch for the campaign and we erase it." Eric Fehrnstrom is his name. The RNC chairman just put this out. The individual mandate is not a tax 'cause he's gotta stay in sync with Romney. I don't know why people are so upset. We warned everybody that Romney's vulnerability is Romneycare. And Romney and Fehrnstrom were out there saying they disagree with the court. This isn't a tax. It's a penalty because Romney doesn't want it said about Romneycare that what he imposed is a tax. So the RNC has to go along with the individual mandate is not a tax, but we're gonna call it that anyway he says....You're wasting your time talking about whether it's a penalty or a tax.
The bottom line is that most of you are getting a little annoyed and fed up at this Republican argument over whether it's a tax or whether it's a penalty, or, wow, there's some silver linings in this. We are gonna have to get focused on the disaster that this Supreme Court ruling is and we're gonna have to admit it, and the sooner the better because this is ball game. This changes this country forever and for the worse. There is nothing positive or good in Obamacare. There's nothing in it. I don't care if you want to keep your kid on your policy 'til 26, preexisting condition, those two things are not worth the accompanying transformation and destruction of what has been known as the United States of America. "Well, then what you would you do, Mr. Limbaugh, if you don't want people focusing on whether it's a penalty or a tax?"
What I've been doing the last two days, but it's not about me. Expose the law. But you're saying we did that. Yeah, we did do it. And we have to keep doing it because we've got one chance left in November. The point has to be what this country is going to become, not whether this is a tax or a penalty so that Republican consultants can guide candidates to winning elections. That's not what this is about. This is about real substance. A disastrous Obamacare decision, and apparently it hasn't sunk in yet in the Republican establishment how outrageously bad this is. There are no silver linings in it. There's no great investment in freedom or individual democracy, limiting of the Commerce Clause. That is a sideshow and it misses and distracts from what we ought to be focused on.You can say it's a tax, but that's minuscule compared to what we need to be saying about it. Just as before the Supreme Court ruled, nothing has changed in terms of what this legislation is. The court didn't change a thing. It's still Obamacare. It's still gonna force everybody into inferior health care services at a higher price. It still undermines the Constitution. It is long lines. It is red tape. It's delays in care. It's denials of coverage. Less cutting-edge drugs. Less money for investment into innovation. It depletes Medicare. It forces young people to pay into another entitlement they will rarely use. The key to this is explaining to people why this law is so bad from a health care perspective. That's what this is about. The people of this country are going to have to be told what this bill is, what survives, the substance of it. And just as before the court ruled, as I say, folks, it's destroying the greatest health care system in the world....
The people who don't know what's ahead of them need to be saved from themselves and protected. It is worth the effort. It will resonate. It isn't resonating now, but it will resonate if it's done right. People do not want government-run health care. It forces them into an inferior system. Everybody who knows anything about this bill knows that. The Tea Party, people who have studied it. The reason the 2010 midterms happened is not because there was a debate over taxes or penalties or what have you. It's because they didn't like what's in the bill. They didn't like what's ahead of them for their country, for their children, for their grandchildren, for their own health care. They don't like it, and nothing's changed about that. Not one thing. Obamacare -- and he doesn't even know what's in it, and he doesn't care. The Democrats don't care specifically. We're the only ones that do. This legislation is gonna be an anathema to individual freedom and liberty. This will deny people choices. It will deny people services, medical services, medical choices. In the meantime, we've got people running around trying to build up John Roberts deceit as some kind of principled brilliance hidden to sabotage the Democrats somewhere down the road in the future or that there's some great political opportunity here, at least we limited the Commerce Clause. At least we limited the Commerce Clause? The Commerce Clause is still being abused by the government. Nothing's been done to change that. Another constitutional provision is violated.
There's a great test here, and it's called original intent. And all you need to do is ask yourself a simple question. Go back and pretend you could bring back to life at this moment in time any of the Founders, and ask, "Is this what you had in mind?" And you would not get one "yes."... And I can hear the pooh-poohs now. "But, Mr. Limbaugh, that's exactly the point. The Founding Fathers are old, they're antiques, their time has passed. It's a New Age." And that's where everybody who thinks that is wrong.
The brilliance of the United States Constitution is its timelessness. It applies to the human condition until eternity, because it is a document devoted to maintaining, proclaiming, and maintaining the freedom and liberty of the individual. It's the greatest document of liberty and freedom ever written by human beings, and it is a target. And it has just been dealt a very severe blow. And to sit here and argue over whether what remains because of the Supreme Court ruling is a tax or a penalty is to lose the argument in November. What are we left with, after all of that?...It will manifest in years down the road....We're left with Obamacare.... It's intact every bit as much as it was. Well, I need to retract that, because there is something meaty in there regarding the states and the opt-out, and I'm gonna take some time to explain with the help of Michael Tanner and a piece. He's from The Cato Institute.
We're left with Obamacare, and we are left with a damaged Constitution. And we have a Republican leadership that's clueless in how to slow any of this down. Meanwhile, the Constitution has been damaged again. I think, folks, this is why Republicans and conservatives make no progress in pushing back massive government. We don't live in Realville. Well, they don't live in Realville. They refuse to accept the reality of what's going on. And so they try to dress it up. They look for silver linings. We're so used to defeat that we try to find a morsel somewhere in the defeat that will make us feel somewhat comfortable and secure, in the midst of huge defeat. What we need to do and what everybody in that town needs to do is get fired up and furious even, and push back and find ways to win and beat this thing back into submission.I don't care what John Roberts said, I don't care what Romney's guy says, and I don't care what the argument ends up determining whether it's a tax or a penalty. What are we gonna end up with? We're gonna end up with massive transfers of wealth from individuals to the government. Individual patients, doctors, hospitals, nurses, drug companies, it will smother innovation, which is the key to our medical system. It'll turn our health care system into a federal DMV-like program. All around us is evidence the government cannot administer anything, much less something this monstrous and big. Despite that, people want to put all their faith and all of their hope in the notion that the government, populated now by a bunch of people who've never spent a day in the real world, in the private sector. They know better. They have all the answers. They're the ones who can fix what's wrong, while we're in the midst of watching and living with them breaking everything, we want to say they're the ones to fix it? It's insane.
We need to move the media out of Washington. The media need to go to Colorado and live around the fires. They need to go to Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and live near the border. They need a different perspective on life. The entire media, all of it -- left, right, center -- needs to get out of Washington. That's not the real world. But it is to them, and that's where whether it's a tax or a penalty, is the most important thing. Whether it's a tax or a penalty, "Yeah, yeah, Dude, that's how we're gonna win this election, we're gonna call it a tax. Nobody wants to pay taxes." Nobody wants this and it became constitutional. Fighting this is gonna require much more than it looks like people are willing to engage in right now. "But, Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Limbaugh,- what about the notion that your base is so fired up?"
Yeah. You know what my answer to that is? Our base is already fired up. Our base has been fired up. And they've been fired up since Obama's election and the first stimulus bill. And they showed how fired up they are with the creation of the Tea Party and the 2010 midterms. The base is fired up. The base is awaiting leadership. The base does not want to hear the Senate majority leader say, "I don't think we can do this." The base doesn't want to hear, "There's more going on here than I think people realize." It's not what people want to hear. Our base doesn't need to be fired up anymore. What the base wants is the Constitution saved. They want Obamacare killed. Looking at this through the traditional political prism is gonna guarantee the same outcome that we've been used to for the last number of years, status quo stays the same.
The base, the Tea Party, other conservatives, we didn't need this decision to inform us about how dire our situation is. We knew it before going into this, and that's why the decision was so important to us. We don't need this to be fired up. I hear people talking, "The base is really fired up, we gotta make sure --" It's incoherence. It's willingly ignoring the substance of this. If I've heard this once I've heard this a thousand times. "Well, this decision throws it back into the legislative arena." Really? You know, if something is unconstitutional, the legislative and presidential branches have violated the Constitution. It's the role of judiciary to uphold the Constitution, not throw it back to the corrupt bunch that created it in the first place. Where's the win-win in that? Where is the silver lining in throwing it back to the corrupt party that gave us this in the first place?
There's a CNN poll that's out, ladies and gentlemen, and do you know what it says? It says the Supreme Court decision has had no impact on the presidential race so far, particularly among people under 40. The Supreme Court ruling had no impact. And that's probably right, because we're busy arguing semantics -- tax, penalty, silver lining -- rather than exposing what Obamacare does to every American using health care and every American who's going to use it. It does enormous damage to the Constitution.
So we claim it's a great political opportunity? And what do we do? We keep repeating, "It's a great political opportunity!" How about we attack the law in every detail, in all of its fullness? How about we attack the decision, without making ridiculous claims of silver linings? "It throws it back to the legislative arena." It does? Did the court throw abortion back to the legislative branch? Did the court throw issues about contraceptives back to the people?
- Did the courts throw the issue of illegal aliens back to the legislative branch?
Did the court throw greenhouse gases or cap and trade back to the legislative branch? My point is, after every court decision does it go back to the legislative branch? No! It holds. It stays. Obamacare was upheld. Obamacare is the law of the land. I don't think people have realized it. Apparently, it hasn't sunk in yet.... No, I'm talking about the wizards on TV and the people in the New York-Washington Corridor. I'm not talking about you. You know.
Throw it back for the legislative branch? "Roberts, in his brilliance, said it's for the people to decide!" The law of the land is now Obamacare. Each branch of the federal government has a job to do; each is supposed to abide by the Constitution. To say that Roberts threw it to the Congress and this is somehow a good thing, when Congress violated the Constitution putting it together in the first place? That's to say that the four great dissenters had it wrong. But they were right. Roberts was wrong! We throw it back to the
- corrupt institution that gave us this corrupt law, and that's a win?
Folks, look. We lost a huge case in the Supreme Court. There is no silver lining. What now has to happen is we regroup. We have to inform as many fellow citizens as possible what is in store for them, their freedom, their health care, their lives, the lives of their children or grandchildren, if this stands. We have to stop deluding ourselves if we are to beat this back. We can fight to repeal Obamacare, and we must, but we have to win the next election big. We can't tolerate any Republican capitulating in advance of this fight or accepting any aspect of Obama.
Folks, I'm sorry....It's all gotta go. This business of, "I like keeping my kid on my plan, preexisting conditions." We're not even talking about insurance if we're going to give people with preexisting conditions insurance. We can deal with those two things separately and in a much smaller way after we toss this whole thing. We've got to toss the whole thing. We don't need 2,700 pages, Constitution-altering, life-altering changes to our freedom and liberty for those two small little things that could be fixed individually by themselves. Same thing with the uninsured. If Chief Justice Roberts had wanted to throw this back to Congress, you know what he woulda done? He would have repealed it. And then he would have said, "If you really want it, you go back and do it right," if he had been paying attention to the Constitution....
He would have said to the elected representatives of the people, "You presented us with an unconstitutional bill and none of it stands, and you go back and you fix it." Instead, he upheld it. I don't care how, penalty, tax, he upheld it. It's the law of the land. And now we're told there's a silver lining, we've gotta go in. "And that's the way it ought to be, anyway, Rush, the people ought to --" We're dealing with corruption everywhere we turn in Washington, DC, and we're dealing in some people with an attitude that's less than fully developed and fully committed to overturning this and repealing it....
The damage that was done to the Constitution cannot be fixed by repealing Obamacare. That's gonna stand no matter what we end up doing with Obamacare.... How do we fix that? Well, there's a way....But that is for another time....
We have our work cut out for us, and these semantic games and distractions, self-delusions that create confusion are not gonna get us anywhere. Again, CNN poll: Supreme Court decision had no impact on the presidential race so far. That's right, we're too busy arguing semantics. It's tax or it's a penalty. Great political opportunity. The truth is, the law was upheld and everybody's screwed. The biggest problem we have is that nobody's gonna get screwed 'til starting in 2014 or 2015. That's when the screw job implements. Nobody's gonna get screwed between now and the election. That's our biggest problem. Everything we're gonna be warning people about is not gonna be happening.
- It's a big, big job.
There is no silver lining waiting to surprise us all some day down the road that Justice Roberts snuck in there 'cause "he's really crafty and smart and really ended up screwing the Democrats, Rush."... Obamacare stands.... I think there's some people in denial. I think there's some people that really think that hasn't happened yet. And the election in November, "That's when it's really gonna be cemented, Rush," as to whether it's happened or not.
- Well, not necessarily.
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Ed. note: As always Rush explains the big picture very well. And as always the problem remains that the GOP establishment doesn't care. They only care about themselves.
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