Let’s Agree: Rush Is Right About Obama

But the so-called “hard-right extremists” issued warnings about these very things for decades — and were right first. – Ed.

Transcript by Rush Limbaugh, 021809:

“I have studied what Obama has said.  I’ve studied where he came from.  I’ve studied those things that he was exposed to when he was growing up.  I think race is a central factor in determining Obama’s worldview. 

We heard him talk yesterday from 1998 about welfare reform, and he clearly believes that welfare reform was designed to punish black, inner-city families and people.  I think he believes that capitalism — and he believes it on his own or he’s been taught it and believes it or it’s a combination of things. But he was raised, he was raised by people who have a huge chip on their shoulder about achievers.  He grew up that way and he became radical, ACORN and so forth.

I really think that when he says, “We are going to transform this country,” I really think what he means is, “I am out to punish the achievers.  I want the achievers to find out what it’s like to be on the lower end of the ladder.  I want the achievers to find out how their success has made people feel.” He believes that people in the lower socioeconomic groups are there because of oppressive tactics, selfishness, and the power of the people who have achieved.
And his definition of people who have “achieved” is pretty low.  Seventy-five grand, a hundred grand, you’ve achieved and you’re facing a tax increase when we get to that point.  I think there’s some anger that has been effervescing in Obama and his people, and we know that’s the case.  The entire left wing in this country is just fulminating with rage. They are filled with it.  They get up angry, they go to bed angry, they spend the whole day mad.

They’re mad, irrationally so.  Obama does a good job of masking his rage, but look at his preacher, Jeremiah Wright.  You talk about angry? Look at Father Pfleger and William Ayers, angry at the inequities and the unfairness of capitalism. Blow up the Pentagon. You know, all these things we tried to say during the campaign mattered.  Everybody said, “No, no, no, no! They’re ancient associations. Obama didn’t know these people. He can’t be held responsible.”  Wrong.  We’re now watching it play out in front of our eyes.  We’re watching the results of anger at what these people considered to be the inequities and the unfairness of capitalism, get squared way.  The Porkulus bill contains many things identical in principle and how they work to this whole housing bailout thing.  Look at who the focus is on.  The focus is on people who never had a chance of paying back the loan.  

To them, to Obama, these people are victims.  They’re victims.  They’re victims of “predatory lenders.”  You know, Obama does not stop to think — or doesn’t want to admit — that predatory lenders were made predatory by acts of Congress and by pressure from Congress, by pressure from the Clinton justice department, name of Janet Reno.  So all of these people that have no business being in a house based on their ability to afford it, are now in the housing slump and the overall economic decline, being foreclosed on, which is the normal thing to do.  “Oh, no! We can’t have that, can’t have that. We can’t kick these people out of their homes because of the actions of others.  We can’t kick these people out of their homes because of the achievers.  We can’t let predatory lenders kick these people out of their homes.  It isn’t fair! These people were entitled to homes just as you people who can afford them are entitled to them.”  

I’ve thought about this, and I really do believe that there is a reservoir of anger that is behind every Obama legislative initiative and idea.  He keeps slamming George Bush.  He said we gotta send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan.  Why?  ‘Cause we haven’t been bold enough and smart enough in Afghanistan. We haven’t done that right.  Everything that he is doing, he’s blaming on Bush and claiming that, without saying the words, that Bush was incompetent. He didn’t do enough here, didn’t do enough there, even though the spending was record.  So there’s anger behind all of this that he camouflages exceptionally well, that he masks very well. He comes across as something far more than anger. People don’t even see that about him.  But when you boil this all down, the housing bailout, there are two groups, and in that group that paid nothing — couldn’t afford to pay the loan from the moment they were granted the mortgage — they are the primary recipients of the bailout money.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: My blood is boiling.  I just listened to a little bit of President Obama during the break.  We’re in the midst of doing a bailout.  We’re going to bail out millions of people who never, ever were able to pay back their mortgages.  They were never, ever, ever going to be able to repay the loans, yet they got them.  How does that happen?  Obama just said that it is time banks and lenders begin to accept their responsibility for this crisis.  And then he admonished everybody to start living within their means, and the crowd went nuts.  He actually said this.  “The days are gone where you can assume that when you buy your house, it’s just going to increase and increase and increase in value.  You can’t live your life as though that’s going to happen.”  Okay, great, Bamster.  You sit there and talk down the economy all you want, and you know who he’s aiming this at?  

Every speech he makes is aimed at people who think they are victims of this country.  And he is their champion.  And he is not going to make their lives any better ’cause it’s not possible.  We don’t have enough money to give everybody to make their lives better.  He’s gonna punish the people he thinks are responsible for them being victims, and that includes the banks and the lenders, and the car companies, and the predatory this, the predatory that.  I didn’t realize until this day, perhaps because I didn’t want to believe it, but I didn’t realize — and I’ve only heard three or four minutes of this speech in the midst of commercial breaks — I didn’t realize the rage or the anger that is propelling the policies of this man and his rhetoric.  His audiences in Fort Myers, the town meeting, wherever else he was prior to that, and then today, it’s the so-called victims of society, the losers in life’s lottery, people who by no act of their own end up getting the shaft.  That’s who he’s aiming at, that’s who he’s telling life is gonna get better, and how is it going to get better?  Because the predatory people, they’re going to get theirs.  Little code language that these victims understand, banks and lenders have to accept responsibility, Wall Street executives have to accept their responsibility for this crisis.  

The only group, the only place in any Obama speech that is exempt from blame is government. 

Oh, he’ll use the word from Washington to Wall Street, we’ve gotta get our act together, but he doesn’t single out anything as predatory in Washington, he doesn’t single out anything in Washington as negative except if it happened in the Bush years, or in the Reagan years.  So this homeowner bailout and the Porkulus bill, pork, and it’s all aimed at two things, shoring up the Democrat Party for as long as possible and making sure that the “winners of life’s lottery,” quote, unquote, Dick Gephardt — achievers in this country, continue to take it on the chin.”

<End of Transcript>

2009-02-18