The following are the highlights of Rush Limbaugh's speech at CPAC. Limbaugh was slated for a 20-minute talk but instead spoke extemporaneoulsy (no teleprompter, natch) for over an hour. And it was a thing of beauty. I picked out what I thought were the high points.
[T]ake a look at all the constituency groups that for 50 years have been depending on the Democrat Party to improve their lives. And you tell me if you find any. They're still complaining, still griping about the same problems. Their problems don't get fixed by government. And those lives have been poisoned. Those lives have been cut short by false promises, from government representatives who said don't worry about it, we'll take care of you. Just vote for us. 
Ronald Reagan used to speak of a shining city on a hill. Barack Obama portrays America as a soup kitchen in some dark night in a corner of America that's very obscure. He's constantly telling the American people that bad times are ahead, worst times are ahead. And it's troubling, because this is the United States of America. Anybody ever ask -- I'm in awe of our country and I ask this question a lot as I've gotten older. We're less than 300 years old. We are younger than nations that have been on this planet for thousands of years. We, nevertheless, in less than 300 years -- by the way, we're no different than any other human beings around the world. Our DNA is no different. We're not better just because we're born in America. There's nothing that sets us apart. How did this happen? How did the United States of America become the world's lone super power, the world's economic engine, the most prosperous opportunity for an advanced lifestyle that humanity has ever known? How did this happen? And why pray tell does the President of the United States want to destroy it? It saddens me.
[T]he people who have achieved great things, most of it is not inherited. Most wealth in this country is the result of entrepreneurial, just plain old hard work. There's no reason to punish it. There's no reason to raise taxes on these people. Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, have one responsibility, and that's to respect the oath they gave to protect, defend and follow the US Constitution. 
They don't have the right to take money that's not theirs and none of it is from the back pockets of producers and give it to groups like ACORN which are going to advance the Democrat Party. If anybody but government were doing this, it would be a crime. And many of us think it's bordering on that as it exists now.
What's the longest war in American history? [The] War on poverty. The war on poverty essentially started in the '30s as part of the New Deal, but it really ramped up in the '60s with Lyndon Johnson, part of the great society war on poverty. We have transferred something like 10 trillion, maybe close to 11 trillion, from producers and earners to non-producers and [non-]earners since 1965. Yet, as I listen to the Democratic Party campaign, why, America is still a soup kitchen, the poor [are] still poor and they have no hope and they're poor for what reason?
They're poor because of us, because we don't care, and because we've gotten rich by taking from them, that's what kids in school are taught today... You know why they're poor, you know why they remain poor? Because their lives have been destroyed by the never-ending government hay that's designed to help them but it destroys ambition. It destroys the education they might get to learn to be self-fulfilling... And it breaks our heart[s]. It breaks our heart[s]. We lose track of numbers with all of the money, with all the money that's been transferred, redistributed, with all the charitable giving in this country.
Ladies and gentlemen, there ought not be any poverty except those who are genuinely ill equipped. But most of the people in poverty in this country are equipped for far much more. They've just been beaten down. They're told don't worry, we'll take care of you. There's nothing out there for you anyway; you'll be discriminated against. Breaks our heart to see this. We can't have a great country and a growing economy with more and more people being told they have a right, because of some injustice that's been done to them or some discrimination, that they have a right to the earnings of others. And it's gotten so out of hand now that what worries me is that... the Barack Obama administration is actively seeking to expand the welfare state in this country because he wants to control it. 
When Obama talks about past economies, he somehow always leaves out the recession of the '80s as worse than this one. Why does he leave it out? Because you know why he leaves it out, America? He leaves it out because we got out of that recession with tax cuts... We got out of the 1980s recession with tax cuts. Do you know that President Obama, in six weeks of his administration, has proposed more spending than from the founding of the country to his inauguration? 
[T]his is not prosperity. It is not going to engender prosperity. It's not going to create prosperity and it's also not going to advance or promote freedom. It's going to be just the opposite. There are going to be more controls over what you can and can't do, how you can and can't do it, what you can and can't drive, what you can and can't say, where you can and can't say it. All of these things are coming down the pike, because it's not about revenue generation to them, it's about control. They do believe that they have compassion. They do believe they care. But... we never are allowed to look at the results of their plans, we are told we must only look at their good intentions, their big hearts. The fact that they have destroyed poor families by breaking up those families by offering welfare checks to women to keep having babies... no more father needed... the government's the father, they destroy the family. We're not supposed to analyze that. We're not supposed to talk about that. We're supposed to talk about their good intentions. They destroy people's futures. The future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama, your agenda is not new. It's not change, and it's not hope....
Spending a nation into generational debt is not an act of compassion. All politicians, including President Obama, are temporary stewards of this nation. It is not their task to remake the founding of this country. It is not their task to tear it apart and rebuild it in their image.
[Democrats are] going to overreach. At some point, at some point people have got to realize none of this is possible. You can't have people living in homes they don't pay for. You can't have people driving cars they don't pay for. I mean, you can for a while. But after a while the people paying for it -- screw this. We're not putting up with it. And you're going to see -- you're already starting to see evidence of these. All the tea parties that are starting to bubble up out there. Those are great. Fabulous. ...And here's the big question. Here's the big question. And I ask this again in the context of my first address to the nation... Aside from the bastardization of the Constitution that the Obama plans are, that TARP is, it's not constitutional. Aside from that, where is the evidence that the people offering all of this have ever succeeded in any similar plans before? There's none. There is no evidence it works.
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