Rush: "Death panel" claims were true because the Senate removed them

By Greg Lewis

Rush got things going on this glorious "Open Line Friday" by declaring that the White House is totally on the defensive, and that they are disheveled, unraveling, and becoming unhinged, and now they are trying to "replicate" the failed attempts by Bill Clinton to get rid of Rush. Rush then kicked off his opening monologue with a sound bite from this morning's Good Morning America report by Brian Ross about the Southern Poverty Law Center's report on the sharp growth in militia groups.

"This is 100 percent total manufactured BS," declared Rush. "It all comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center and a guy named Mark Potok [...] This guy has been trying to gin this up since before Obama was inaugurated -- in fact, even since Obama was elected. This whole thing was calculated to divide and distract. It indicates just how unhinged and out of whack the White House is on this."

Rush went on to call the SPLC report "likely a White House plant, just as the little girl who asked Obama the softball question in Portsmouth, New Hampshire." Then Rush echoed Fox News correspondent Major Garrett's claim that people are receiving unsolicited emails from the White House: "If you're getting an email from Axelrod and the White House, I guarantee you it's a result of the snitch website. The White House is clearly out of whack."

Then Rush brought up "death panels." Rush claimed that Rahm's brother Ezekiel Emanuel has been an "advocate of" death panels. They claim there are no death panels, said Rush, but the Senate removed them from the bill. Rush professed that they had to be there for the Senate to have removed them.

Rush continues his vendetta against the SPLC

Then Rush claimed that they're trying to link the militia group stuff to Rush, and trying to make all the town hall attendees into potential assassins, calling this despicable and shameful. Then he played more audio bites of Ross' GMA report featuring SPLC's Potok. Rush wondered where this reporting was when there were books and movies about assassinating George Bush.

Rush then claimed that the White House is trying adopting the same strategy as Clinton did in 1994 in trying to blame the Oklahoma City bombing on Rush. Then Rush reminisced about all the talk before the inauguration about unity and post-partisanship because of Obama's election. And now the President and his "henchmen" are attacking ordinary Americans as unruly mobs, racists, and Nazis.

After some more discussion of the Secret Service investigating death threats, and talking about how journalists loved it when the Iraqi journalist threw his shoe was thrown at Bush, Rush said that the source for all these stories about militias and white supremacist groups is the SLPC. Rush asked of Nancy Pelosi: What about the person who started all of this by "calling half the people in this country Nazis"?

After the break, Rush complained about the media covering his comparison of Obama's health care logo to a Nazi insignia. Rush said the media is describing this as Rush calling Obama a Nazi. Rush objected: "It is I who is denouncing all of this," he said.

The Rush went on about the Democrat [sic] Party's history of "distorting" his words:

LIMBAUGH: The Democrat Party has tried to make me the issue. They have tried to demonize and villainize me since I have been behind the golden EIB microphone. They have distorted my comments and actions on Michael J. Fox and Claire McCaskill commercials. They have distorted me on this and they have distorted me on Bill Clinton, so -- it never works. I'm still here. Clinton's reduced to making speeches at the Netroots convention in Pittsburgh yesterday. I am still here. Hillary's in Africa. I am still here.

Rush went on to say that Obama is "detached from reality" and again said that Palin was right about death panels, because the Senate has now removed them from their version of the health care bill. Also, Rush repeated his point from this week that we don't spend money on the healthy, only the sick. Therefore, cutting health care costs means cutting money for the sick, and that's the elderly.

After another break, Rush brought up an AP report from after the November election, stating that Obama had received more threats than other presidents-elect. Rush noted that SPLC's Potok -- who "has a fetish. This guy has a single-minded focus and purpose on this" -- was quoted in the article.

Then Rush contrasted his unerring support for Israel and "Jews" with that of Obama:

LIMBAUGH: There is no bigger supporter of Israel than me. Not Obama -- me. The Jew-haters, the anti-Semites, they're not part of my circle. They're not part of my life. I don't run around with anti-Semites. I don't run around with people who don't like Jews or hate Israel. It was Obama who surrounded himself with such people.

Then Rush aired a series of audio bites from an interview between Fox News' Megyn Kelly and White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton, where Kelly pressed Burton on the previously-mentioned White House email list. Burton claimed the White House is not keeping an "enemies list" -- a claim Rush didn't really buy. Rush also objected to Burton's claim that people were showing up at town halls with swastikas. Rush insisted there was no photographic evidence to support this. Rush then added that the whole point of the "snitch website" was to have citizens snitching each other out.

Rush's broken record defense: "Nobody's calling Obama Hitler"

Rush went on to continue his weeklong defense of his Nazi comparison, this time with some help from National Review's Andy McCarthy:

LIMBAUGH: But this gets to the point that I raised the other day, and Andy McCarthy, he's got a brilliant piece -- I don't know if it's posted yet, but he's got a brilliant piece coming at National Review Online dealing with this whole notion that we can't somehow compare national socialism in Germany to the Obama health care plan, simply because at the end of national socialism we had a monstrous genocide. Nobody's calling Obama Hitler. Nobody's calling Pelosi Joseph Goebbels. We're just saying socialism is socialism wherever you find it and there are some damn close similarities between national socialism and healthcare in Germany and what this bunch is trying here.

On the other side of the next commercial break, Rush aired a new Paul Shanklin "comedy" skit, featuring an Obama impersonator saying he would protect Americans from doctors removing tonsils and amputating limbs to line their pockets.

The first caller for "Open Line Friday" was apparently calling from coastal Cadiz, Spain, and asked Rush if things were really as divisive over the health care debate as what he was hearing overseas. Rush confirmed the callers suspicions, and explained that the protests are working because independents are sympathizing with the protesters.  

Rush concluded the hour with an ego-inflating observation about Obama's town hall even later on Friday: "Obama's town hall started at 2:55 Eastern time. And the reason for that, of course, is so I will have no chance to comment on it until Monday."

Rush tells caller there is "nothing redeemable" in Obama's health care plan

Hour two began with Rush defending his diet and weight loss. Then Rush aired a series of audio clips of Ronald Reagan arguing against "socialized medicine" in 1961. After airing them, Rush said that he was getting chills down his back, and that listening to Reagan reminded him of listening to his father. Rush stated: "The lesson here is they never stop."

After the break, Rush took a caller who asked Rush if there was anything that was "right" with Obama's plan for health care. "No," said. Rush, there is nothing in this that is redeemable at all. Rush said that The Washington Post and CBO analysis of the House bill show that it leaves 17 million Americans uninsured after 17 years. Rush said the other reason the plan is bad is because the government is going to be totally in charge of it, adding that nobody in government understands health. Obama has never been a doctor, and it's none of his business how you choose to live.

Then Rush said Obama has been repeating two "falsehoods" about health care. First, he says our health care system is broken, but he says if you like your insurance, you get to keep it. Second, Rush noted Obama's recent gaffe, where he said he wanted a public option to compete with the private insurance companies, similar to how FedEx and UPS compete with the Post Office, which is a mess. Rush concluded the phone call by telling the caller that you don't compromise with people who want to take your freedom away, you beat them.

Rush reads Andy McCarthy's defense of Rush

After another break, Rush read extensively from the previously teased Andy McCarthy piece at NRO asking: "Why shouldn't socialized medicine prompt comparisons to National Socialism?" McCarthy's column essentially defends and agrees with Rush's recent Nazi comparisons.

While Rush read the entire column, he also highlighted McCarthy's point that The New York Times' David Leonhardt previously compared Obama's stimulus plan back in March to the success of stimulus programs in 1930s Germany. McCarthy was perturbed that "the Left's nuanced geniuses" get to decide when Nazi comparisons were okay, but "National Socialism is banned from the Right's case against socialism." Meanwhile, Rush went on about how the Times was "praising" Nazi stimulus. (Leonhardt began his piece with this disclaimer: "Every so often, history serves up an analogy that's uncomfortable, a little distracting and yet still very relevant.")

Also, while reading McCarthy's column, Rush again made the point that he doesn't have anti-Semite and anti-Israel friends, but Obama does. Then Rush looped ABC's Brian Ross and the SPLC back into the conversation:

LIMBAUGH: So, Mr. Ross, you and the Southern Poverty Law Center trying to tie us on the right to Nazis when you've got a man in the White House who has surrounded himself with anti-Israeli people and anti-Jew people. You need to rethink this, Mr. Ross, and be very careful when you start allowing propagandists to throw around accusations.

In the final segment of Hour 2, Rush took a call from someone who was uncomfortable with the president sending his "thugs" and ACORN to town halls. Rush explained to the caller that "Obama's opponents are not debated, they are swept away." Rush added: "Obama clears the playing field. This is the natural tendency of authoritarian, of an egoist -- he is both. But it is. It's amazing to see the White House attacking over half the American people. And impugning them as Nazis or as an unruly mob." Obama's opponents, concluded Rush, are the majority of the American people.

Rush continues to peddle his fact-free health care spending theory

After some more diet talk to start off Hour 3, Rush read from an AP analysis headlined, "Critics co-opt Obama organizing playbook." Rush said the article's flaw was that there was never any substantive support for Obama -- he's an empty suit and a vessel that people could make into whatever they wanted him to be. If Obama's support was genuine and substantive, asserted Rush, then Obama wouldn't have to send out emails from Organize for America to tell people where to go and how to behave, or call his union buddies for help in town hall meetings.

Anyway, Rush went on to put this into perspective to show us the "real Obama." Obama gave "marching orders" to Congress to pass the health care bill before the August recess, and Obama would have signed it, explained Rush, even though it would have been loaded with serious, fatal flaws that would have made health care worse. Meanwhile, Rush explained Snerdley's theory that Obama would be able to get his support back by taking his plan of the table and telling the American people that he would start from scratch with their concerns in mind.

But Rush explained the flaw in his producer's thinking was that Obama cannot get all of his support back because he has lost the trust of the American people. Whatever bill he would have came back with would have been just as "onerous," but better disguised -- that's what Obama and his ilk have been trying to do for 60 years.

After the break, Rush played an audio clip of Nancy Pelosi at a 2006 town hall stating her appreciation of town halls, and how she was a big fan of FDR for being a "disruptor." Not anymore, said Rush, now protestors are Nazis to Pelosi. Then Rush played an audio clip of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) apologizing for calling protests "un-American." Rush said all these Democrats are running around with this hate speech aimed at the American people.

Next up was an audio bite from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who said we shouldn't be focused on "phony" end of life discussion led by people like Rush Limbaugh, but rather discussing things like how this country spends twice as much per capita on health care than other nations. Rush objected, asserting that it's "not insane" to talk about Obama wanting to kill off old and disabled people (as Sanders put it) because "it's going to happen." Rush again explained his theory on cutting health care spending:

LIMBAUGH: Health care money is spent on sick people. And the older they are, the more we spend. That's just statistics. It makes sense. So if you're going to reduce spending -- [...] Well, if you're going to cut spending in health care, and you don't spend any money on the healthy, then where in the hell are you going to cut spending? You gotta cut it on the sick.

Then Rush was back on the mysterious White House email list, and aired an audio bite of Garrett asking Gibbs about it at yesterday's press briefing. Garrett was on Fox this morning, and said he still doesn't know how people are getting these emails. It's the snitch website, exclaimed Rush, adding that it was the "express purpose" of the snitch website.

Rush critiques Bill Clinton's speech at the "Nutroots" convention, which he described as an "assemblage of fruitcakes"

Then Rush moved on to some audio bites from Bill Clinton's speech last night at the liberal "Nutroots" convention in Pittsburgh. This first clip featured Clinton responding to a question about Don't Ask, Don't Tell, with Clinton telling the audience that "you" couldn't deliver him support in Congress, who voted for it with veto-proof majorities. Rush characterized this as Clinton "attacking a hapless little blogger" for asking about DADT. That's the Bill Clinton mentality.

The next clip was of Clinton explaining how Republicans are rooting for the President to fail. Rush said that Clinton still can't get him off his brain. After another break, Rush aired another clip of Clinton at the convention saying how the US spends more on health care than any other country in the world. Rush pointed out that we also spend more on public education, food stamps, welfare, and unemployment, and asked Clinton and Sanders if we should "reform" those programs as well.

The final sound bite from the "Nutroots" convention was of Clinton predicting that no matter how low support for health care reform is driven, the minute Obama signs it, his approval will go up, and within a year his approval will explode. Rush said this is how the "big lie" works. Clinton keeps talking about Republicans trying to kill health care, but Obama is losing support from independents and Blue Dog Democrats. Then Rush cautioned Clinton against raising his voice and pointing his finger during his speech, and referred to the convention as an "assemblage of fruitcakes."

Then "Open Line Friday" continued with a caller from Montana who compared Obama's health care plan to "reservation health care." After Rush finally realized what "reservation health care" meant (hint: think "clown" health care, Rush), he declared that it sounds "exactly" like what Obamacare is going to be. The next caller came to the U.S. from Iran in 1978, and compared what is happening here to Iran when the Mullahs came to power. Rush was "fascinated" by people like the caller who have lived under totalitarian regimes, though Rush noted we're "not yet Iran." The segment was rounded out with an ad for the Heritage Foundation, in which Rush read extensively from a Heritage blog post.

After a final commercial break, Rush returned with an American Thinker post about cap and trade legislation being defeated in Australia. Rush said people discovered what would happen under the legislation, and liberals lost. Rush declared that what happened in Australia is a great illustration of how his audience could stop health care here.

Zachary Aronow and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: The White House is gathering an enemies list. People are getting emails from Joe Axelrod, and they don't know how they got their address. It's the snitch website. You people understand what's happen -- people are sending in stories and emails. If you're getting an email from Axelrod and the White House, I guarantee you it's a result of the snitch website. The White House is clearly out of whack.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: The Democrat Party has tried to make me the issue. They have tried to demonize and villainize me since I have been behind the golden EIB microphone. They have distorted my comments and actions on Michael J. Fox and Claire McCaskill commercials. They have distorted me on this and they have distorted me on Bill Clinton, so -- it never works. I'm still here. Clinton's reduced to making speeches at the Netroots convention in Pittsburgh yesterday. I am still here. Hillary's in Africa. I am still here.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: There is no bigger supporter of Israel than me. Not Obama -- me. The Jew-haters, the anti-Semites, they're not part of my circle. They're not part of my life. I don't run around with anti-Semites. I don't run around with people who don't like Jews or hate Israel. It was Obama who surrounded himself with such people.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: But this gets to the point that I raised the other day, and Andy McCarthy, he's got a brilliant piece -- I don't know if it's posted yet, but he's got a brilliant piece coming at National Review Online dealing with this whole notion that we can't somehow compare national socialism in Germany to the Obama health care plan, simply because at the end of national socialism we had a monstrous genocide. Nobody's calling Obama Hitler. Nobody's calling Pelosi Joseph Goebbels. We're just saying socialism is socialism wherever you find it and there are some damn close similarities between national socialism and healthcare in Germany and what this bunch is trying here.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: So, Mr. Ross, you and the Southern Poverty Law Center trying to tie us on the right to Nazis when you've got a man in the White House who has surrounded himself with anti-Israeli people and anti-Jew people. You need to rethink this, Mr. Ross, and be very careful when you start allowing propagandists to throw around accusations.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Obama's opponents are not debated, they are swept away. Obama clears the playing field. This is the natural tendency of authoritarian, of an egoist -- he is both. But it is. It's amazing to see the White House attacking over half the American people. And impugning them as Nazis or as an unruly mob.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Health care money is spent on sick people. And the older they are, the more we spend. That's just statistics. It makes sense. So if you're going to reduce spending -- [...] Well, if you're going to cut spending in healthcare, and you don't spend any money on the healthy, then where in the hell are you going to cut spending? You gotta cut it on the sick.

Ego on loan from Narcissus

LIMBAUGH: And they're sending Obama, he's out in Montana today to do a town hall, which, by the way, starts five minutes before this program ends. Obama's town hall started at 2:55 Eastern time. And the reason for that, of course, is so I will have no chance to comment on it until Monday.

Enemies list

LIMBAUGH: This is 100 percent total manufactured BS. It all comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center and a guy named Mark Potok, P-O-T-O-K -- I don't know how to pronounce his name -- but Mark Potok, he's the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, he's a columnist at the Huffington Post. He is the source of all of these hate crimes stories, and he has been for years.

There is also an article on ABC posted by Brian Ross on their website, much of this article has been dutifully spouted almost word for word in literally dozens of articles generated by Mr. Potok from the Southern Poverty Law Center over the months since Obama decided to run for office. They only differ really in citing contemporary details to make the stories seem fresh, but they're ultimately the same claims that Potok has been making from the start. If you Google Potok and hate and racism, it returns 21,600 hits. This guy has been trying to gin this up since before Obama was inaugurated -- in fact, even since Obama was elected. This whole thing was calculated to divide and distract. It indicates just how unhinged and out of whack the White House is on this.

This story is likely a White House plant, just as the little girl who asked Obama the softball question in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And this is -- the sad thing is, I predicted all of this. It's despicable, the race card being played because Obama's facing opposition to his plan to seize one-sixth of the American economy. This is an intentional effort to divide the country. This is community national agitating as its worst. This is all that Obama, a community agitator, knows.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: This guy has a fetish. This guy has a single-minded focus and purpose on this.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: He was trying to gin this up last November. And he got the Associated Press to run with it, he got Brian Ross to repeat it today on ABC's website and Good Morning America.

Rush Limbaugh is exactly like Adolf Hitler.

Now, before you start in with the condemnations and Godwin references, let me explain. In saying that Rush Limbaugh is exactly like Adolf Hitler, what I mean is that they were both possessed of a gift for public speaking. I'm not comparing Rush to the Hitler that was responsible for millions of deaths across Europe, I'm comparing him to the Hitler that could give one Reichstag-burner of a speech. And for you to simply assume that in comparing Rush to Hitler, I was linking him to Hitler's horrific acts of genocide is wrongheaded and outrageous, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

This argument is, of course, ridiculous. I'm making it because Rush, after closing out last week with a spirited recitation of the ways in which Democrats are just like Nazis and making direct comparisons between President Obama and Hitler, offered this defense of himself on Monday: "But old [White House press secretary Robert] Gibbs here wants to say I was comparing the genocidal Hitler to Obama, and that's just typical of this bunch, to take that position on it. I was comparing one socialist to another, pure and simple." This is nuts. You can't subdivide Hitler. The reason Hitler comparisons are so heinous is because they implicitly link the other party to genocide. And Rush himself appears to understand this, but only when he believes he's on the receiving end of the comparison: "[T]o sit here and to be compared to the monstrous, genocidal Adolf Hitler, that's beyond the pale."

And Rush's defense that he was simply comparing Obama's and Hitler's affinity for "socialism" rests on the notion that Hitler was a man of the left, which is a boutique theory of right-wing revisionists, but would make any serious historian cringe. Painting Hitler as a liberal helps to reinforce Rush's idea that conservatism can do absolutely no wrong, and liberalism is the source of all evil in the world. He said as much last week during one of his pep talks for the faithful: "There is nothing wrong with conservatism." And you saw Rush stridently defend the notion this week as he proclaimed that the people displaying swastikas at the health care protests aren't the true-blooded American patriots who oppose Obama, but are actually ACORN members "using political jujitsu to try to make it look like opponents of Obama's health care plan are these radicals." He even went so far as to say that the swastika painted on a sign outside the office of Rep. David Scott (D-GA) was the work of "[s]ome Democrat lackey." Death threats against Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC)? "I, frankly, don't believe this. I don't believe these guys' lives are being threatened." The Southern Poverty Law Center's report on rising right-wing militias? "This is 100 percent total manufactured B.S."

But those, admittedly, are speculative examples. We can't be 100 percent sure that every person displaying a swastika at a town hall isn't an ACORN plant, or that the swastika painted on Scott's sign wasn't part of some sinister Democratic plot, or that the SPLC didn't just invent all its data. What we can be sure of, however, is that ex-Gov. Sarah Palin was 100 percent wrong when she wrote that Obama's health plan establishes "death panels" with the purpose of euthanizing the elderly and disabled. But in Limbaugh Land, conservatives are always right, no matter how wrong they are. So not only was Palin's "death panels" statement correct, her defense of it proved her "intellectual heft." According to Rush: "Seems to me if you go to her Facebook, she's done some homework on this health care bill. She has become on expert on Section 1233. ... I would suggest that anybody who doubts her intellectual heft or her ability to learn and study, go to her Facebook page and look at the notes she's taken."

So conservatives are always right and good, and liberals are always wrong and evil. But what happens when conservatives attack other conservatives? Earlier this week on Fox News, Mort Kondracke said "the [Republican] leadership is afraid of Rush Limbaugh," and Charles Krauthammer said of the rowdy town hall protests: "What's happening is this is causing a backlash. It's completely unnecessary. It is shooting yourself in the foot." This presented an awkward situation for Rush, particularly when you consider that Rush has expressed his desire to replace his own brain with Krauthammer's. His solution? To say they're still good conservatives, but they've been corrupted: "It's a classic example ... of inside-the-Beltway-itis. ... [N]o matter how smart you are, no matter how brilliant you are, no matter how often you are right, there's something about living, working, and breathing inside the Beltway that makes you ... unable to have a perspective identical to people who are living and working outside that place every day."

But one can't forget the basis for all this Nazi rhetoric and pie-in-the-sky conservative boosterism -- health care reform. Or, more accurately, brazen lies about health care reform. Let's consider, once again, the infamous death panels. Confounding logical thinkers everywhere, Rush found evidence of their existence in their non-existence: "There are and were death panels in [the bill] because the Senate has announced, 'We're going to pull them out. We're going to get rid of all that stuff.' So they were there." Not quite. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) announced that the Medicare reimbursement for end-of-life counseling had been dropped from the Senate version of the bill because it "could be misinterpreted." This, of course, followed Grassley's misinterpretation of the bill a day earlier, when he suggested it would establish "a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma." The fact remains that the provision, whether it's in the bill or not, does not provide for "death panels."

Rush also used health care as a springboard into one of his favorite pastimes -- using Obama's own family to smear him. Specifically, Rush invoked Obama's stepbrother George, whom he endearingly referred to as "George Obongo Obango Odingo Obama" and Obama's "hut brother." Rush argued that Obama sees health care reform as being all about himself, since the president "doesn't give a damn" about his brother living in a hut. Don't worry if the connection eludes you, because it also eludes me, but the reality of the situation is that George Obama doesn't appear to want handouts from his White House-dwelling kin. In fact, George is currently writing a memoir to be published by Simon & Shuster, and his advocacy work on behalf of the poor gives him "an identification so strong that he chooses to live among them."

None of that matters, though, because Rush bringing up George Obama is all about one thing -- making Obama appear, as Rush himself put it, "not at all similar to the core of the American people." That's why Rush brings up Obama's birth certificate, or reads articles comparing Obama to an African colonial, or draws parallels between Obama and Hitler. He wants to give the impression that the president is foreign, shady, and dangerous.

But don't be alarmed by all this Nazi rhetoric from Rush, because it turns out that he hasn't actually been saying it! By his own accounting, Rush has been a voice for calm, explaining today that "[i]t is I who is denouncing all of this." Well, what about all those Hitler comparisons, Rush? "Nobody's calling Obama Hitler; nobody's calling Pelosi Joseph Goebbels." And since it wasn't Rush or the conservatives engaging in this sort of rhetoric, that really left only one other party to blame: "All these Democrats running around with all this hate speech aimed at the American people, and some of them now having to apologize for it."

So there you have a fine encapsulation of The Rush Limbaugh Show this week -- Rush never called anyone a Nazi, it was actually the Democrats who did that, because Rush is a good conservative, and liberals are just like Nazis.