Doug Ross @ Journal

The Best of Rush Limbaugh at the Warner Theater

On November 16, Rush Limbaugh spoke at the Warner Theater in Washington, DC. Some of the highlights:

...You won't believe this. I haven't told this story much. Some time ago, I found myself in an elevator. It was in New York, and it was at a wedding. It was in Brooklyn, and I'm getting in the elevator to leave. It's been a long night, and just as the door is about to close, somebody puts their hand in the elevator doors that close, and it's Hillary Clinton. (laughter) She's senator at this time. She is a senator. and she gets in the elevator. She sees me, and she hits the stop button on the elevator. (laughter) She said, "I don't believe this. Do you know how long it's been since I have felt like a real woman?" (laughter) I didn't say anything, but I was thinking, "Yeah." (laughter) She said, "Would you make me feel like a real woman?" I said, "Certainly." So I took off all my clothes and I put them on the floor of the elevator, and I said, "Now fold them..." [On visiting with the troops] ...one of the guys as we were getting around to leave said, "Gosh, I wish you would have been here five minutes sooner." "Really? Why?" "Senator Kerry was here." (laughter) This is a guy who just lost two legs, and he's laughing to me about Senator Kerry. I said, "Kerry was here? What did he do?" "He just came in and walked around." "Did he say anything to you?" "No, he didn't say much of anything to anybody, but I wish he would have said something to me." I said, "Why?" He said, "So I could tell him: 'Senator, I'm too stupid to understand what you just said.'" (wild applause) That is a true story... [On the mainstream media] Now, they succeeded to the extent that the people who voted against Republicans voted against Iraq. They succeeded, but look what it took. Now, this is not consolation. In the old days, once Cronkite decided he'd had it with the Vietnam War, it took one broadcast, and that was it. That turned the public -- and that broadcast, by the way, LBJ said, "Well, I've lost Cronkite; I've lost the country. I'm going back to Texas." They don't have that kind of power anymore. It took them three years of the most offensive, dreadful stories every night on the news -- and it didn't take much. A 20-second sound bite here followed by a stand-up report there; 30 seconds over here of an IED going off or a burning car. Occasionally you pepper it with a story of an American soldier raping innocent Iraqis. People, believe it or not -- and you can tell who watches the nightly news, ABC, CBS, and NBC -- and I call them now ABS, NBS, and CBS, and MSDNC [On Hillary] She subordinated herself to that guy from Arkansas who turned out to show total disrespect for her, humiliated her, embarrassed her, and she still hung on. Don't you think she deserves the White House on her own? And that's it, folks, because if you look at what she's done, there's nothing to argue. I saw a blog post from 2003 from some guy who worked -- a liberal Democrat, admitted liberal Democrat, worked -- in the Clinton White House on health care, he wrote this in 2003, said, "It was a disaster in every which way possible. She didn't have any of the political or managerial skills. Keep her as far away from the White House as possible." This is somebody that worked with her on the team. I don't know if he's still alive. (laughter and applause) [On Conservatism] Conservatism is tough to stand up for in a lot of places because it's so reviled and impugned, misreported. People say we gotta get back to the basics of conservatism. What are they? One thing about conservatism to me: Conservatism is the ultimate in compassion and respect from one person to another. Liberalism... (applause) Everything about conservatism derives from that, be it economic, be it social. Everything derives from that, and yet we conservatives are tarred and feathered as extremists, racists, sexists, bigoted, hateful homophobes. What do we want? We want the best country that we can have, and we want it for our children and grandchildren -- and how does that happen? We want people to have the greatest opportunity for prosperity using their own ambition and their own desire to learn or whatever they have to do to succeed. That's how you get a great country: great people, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Great countries don't come from laws. (applause) They don't come from public policy. They don't come from programs. It's the people who make the country work; it's people who make an economy work... [On Wal-Mart] Liberals hate Wal-Mart, one of the most successful American businesses. You look at their companies on the target list: ExxonMobil, Big Drug, Big Tobacco, Big Fat Food now, Big Trans-fat, all these. Look at their enemies list, and it is a roster of successful corporate circumstances that have created wealth and jobs, Wal-Mart specifically. If things were as they appear, liberals would love Wal-Mart, because liberals love the little guy. Liberals think that most people are little guys. They don't earn much; they don't have a chance to earn much; why, they need the minimum wage to be able to exist; they can't afford health care; they can't afford a new car; they can't afford a flat-screen TV; they can't afford dog food and drugs. Now all of a sudden comes Wal-Mart, and they can afford all that. (laughter) You don't think that makes liberals mad? (applause) Because it's government programs that are supposed to provide that. Government programs are supposed to be where people look to find a chance for economic prosperity to save a few bucks. They're supposed to get up, find whatever direction the nation's capital is and kind of do one of these things. Instead they're going to Wal-Mart. But not for long. Because working with the unions, liberal Democrats will do their best to punish Wal-Mart. You know, Wal-Mart's really made 'em mad now. They're having a price war with Target at Christmas. Those prices are already too low for liberals to compete with, but now they're cutting them even more. [On federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research and the controversial Michael J. Fox ads] The equivalent would be -- you know, I'm deaf. I have a cochlear implant. If I take this hearing piece off, I am a hundred percent deaf. I hear nothing. Imagine me doing a commercial saying, "Hi. I'm Rush Limbaugh. I'm deaf. I don't like being deaf. I want to be cured. People tell me that the embryos from babies in the womb could cure my hearing. So I want to kill babies in the womb so I can hear again. Please vote for candidate X, because the other candidate won't do it." Do you think I would be applauded as somebody trying to advance medical science to help the hearing? That was the essence of these ads that ran. They were a little bit more cleverly worded, but any time you put in there that somebody wants to criminalize research or somebody doesn't want you to get well because he's a Republican?

EIB: The Best of Rush Limbaugh at the Warner Theater