This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by Joe the Plumber, the articulate conservative
By Simon Maloy

Good afternoon, and felíz Cinco de Mayo a todos. Speaking of Cinco de Mayo, we read that President Obama garbled a bit of Spanish yesterday at a White House celebration of the Mexican holiday. Under normal circumstances, such rhetorical miscues generate a small amount of light-hearted coverage. But we're dealing with Rush Limbaugh here, so it's likely that this will turn into yet another extended rant about Obama and his sentient, sabotage-prone teleprompter.

Rush opened the show with a question -- the media and newspapers have concluded that the conservative movement and the Republican Party are dead unless they move to the center, but if conservatives and Republicans are, in fact, “dead,” then why are Democrats and the media spending so much time “dancing on our graves?” Rush said he made this same point during his speech at the Heritage Foundation last night, asking why conservatives are playing dead and accepting the premise that they have to act like the left in order to return to power. The Democrats didn't run to the right in 2004, Rush said. Instead, they moved to the anti-Bush, anti-American (in terms of the Iraq war) left.

So if conservatives are dead, Rush again asked, why are the Democrats and the media still obsessed with them? It's because they're trying to diminish the influence of the conservative movement in the GOP, Rush said, because they “threaten” the left, which is full of “lies” and “deceit.” According to Rush, they're trying to destroy people who can articulate the beliefs and principles that the left fears -- specifically, himself and Sarah Palin. Rush added: “To me, this is an opportunity. It's what I told the people at Heritage last night. It's an opportunity. We have a great opportunity to contrast ourselves with the most liberal, quasi-socialist administration in history. We've got the country more afraid of this administration than I have ever seen. We've got people that I know more afraid of their government than they have ever been. This is not our country. This is not the country we were raised in.”

Rush then noted that the “drive-bys” were all over his comments yesterday whacking the National Council for a New America for excluding Palin from their “listening tour.” Rush said he told the people at Heritage last night what he said on the program yesterday -- Republicans don't need a listening tour, they need to get out there and tell people about conservatism. That's why Rush wouldn't make it as a politician, he said, because he would go out there and tell people to solve their own problems. Obama's the exact opposite, Rush explained -- every day, Obama presents a new crisis or problem and offers himself as the solution, which makes people into “waifs” and “wards of the state.”

Then Rush returned to wondering why the media are still “kneecapping” everyone who can “articulate conservatism” and listed who those people were: Sarah Palin, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Sen. Rick Santorum, and Joe the Plumber. Yep... Joe the Plumber, who most recently articulated the conservative position on the "queers" that he won't let near his kids. Once again, Rush said, this is all about trying to diminish the influence of conservatives within the GOP, because “part and parcel” of the left's existence is to “wipe out the opposition.”

Rush went into the break explaining that his point in bringing all this up was that conservatives should not be depressed, they should be energized. Rush loves being feared, he explained -- not that he wants people to be afraid of him, but he considers the fact that people are afraid of lovable old him a “measure of success.”

After the break, Rush proclaimed his admiration for Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who told the National Journal that Republicans in Washington are behaving "erratically" and should stop whining about the Democrats not being bipartisan. Rush said he wants Republicans to offer alternative proposals to Democratic ideas like “nationalized health care,” not to change those ideas on the margins or go on “listening tours.” Daniels recognizes, said Rush, that this is a “golden opportunity” for conservatives because Obama and the Democrats are “vulnerable.” They're “vulnerable” because there's no way what they are doing is going to work because you can't sustain Obama's proposed budget deficits. You want to try to stop some of this bad stuff from happening, Rush said, because what Obama has planned will result in the loss of liberty and wealth for many Americans.

Most of the rest of the hour was a eulogy for Jack Kemp and another paean to the alleged supply-side genius that was Ronald Reagan, whose tax cuts were the greatest thing to happen to this country ever because they were born of a philosophy derived from the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence: more freedom, less government, blah blah blah. As we love to point out, Reagan, despite Rush's avowed supply-side revisionism, actually raised taxes -- several times, in fact. Kemp, Rush said, was a champion of the Reagan tax cuts and he got them passed because he won the argument from the conservative viewpoint. The Democrats who controlled the House, Rush said, were forced to vote for the tax cuts because Reagan and Kemp won the argument, but the Dems never “came to believe it” because "[t]hey are afraid of tax cuts."

Anyway, after some more praise of Kemp's conservative bona fides, Rush asked us why, if Kemp was such an ardent Reagan revolutionary, was he never able to rise to the level of the vice presidency? Because he ran with a “moderate” in 1996: “Jack Kemp was eventually seduced. He was seduced into thinking that the big tent idea of the party was the way to win. And I'm telling you, when the big tent people get a hold of the party, all it does is lose and lose and lose, and it was that way before Reagan.”

Rush closed out the hour by noting that he had just received the question: Does he really think Obama wants to destroy prosperity? We'll let him answer: “My friends, read his books. Barack Obama's primary objective is undoing Ronald Reagan's tax cuts. Now why would that be? That's all he's doing, returning the nation's wealth to its so-called rightful owners. He operates on the belief that every achiever in this country is a thief, that every achiever has stolen or has something that's genuinely not his or hers -- that they've come by it unfairly.” Rush added for good measure: “We're just not going to allow it to happen. But I -- there's no question that he's defining prosperity down. I mean, his objective is to undo the Reagan tax cuts. Now if his objective is to undo the Reagan tax cuts, I guess those are really big tent moderate ideas, huh? We know Obama is a left-wing radical. He takes a look at anything right-wing and he wants to destroy it.”

Highlights from Hour 1

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: To me, this is an opportunity. It's what I told the people at Heritage last night. It's an opportunity. We have a great opportunity to contrast ourselves with the most liberal, quasi-socialist administration in history. We've got the country more afraid of this administration than I have ever seen. We've got people that I know more afraid of their government than they have ever been. This is not our country. This is not the country we were raised in.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: We didn't sell Tip O'Neill on these tax cuts. We didn't sell the Democrats on the philosophy and the policy of the tax cuts. If we had've, they wouldn't be promising to raise everybody's taxes every time they open their mouth. What happened was we beat their butts in the eyes of the American people. Ronald Reagan was able to explain this to people and Jack Kemp and his other -- and the whole army was able to explain this to people.

The Democrats had no choice whether to vote for it because the American public had elected Reagan in a landslide on substantive issues. He had a mandate and this was part of the mandate -- cutting taxes. But don't think they ever came to believe it.

They are afraid of tax cuts. They are afraid of the principle of burgeoning economic freedom and liberty because the more of that you get, the less need there is for liberals. So they were never persuaded; they were beaten.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Jack Kemp was eventually seduced. He was seduced into thinking that the big tent idea of the party was the way to win. And I'm telling you, when the big tent people get a hold of the party, all it does is lose and lose and lose, and it was that way before Reagan.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: My friends, read his books. Barack Obama's primary objective is undoing Ronald Reagan's tax cuts. Now why would that be? That's all he's doing, returning the nation's wealth to its so-called rightful owners. He operates on the belief that every achiever in this country is a thief, that every achiever has stolen or has something that's genuinely not his or hers -- that they've come by it unfairly.

He may not be about destroying prosperity, but he sure as hell is going to try to define it down. My hope is that he can't destroy prosperity, that no one man can destroy the United States of America, even with his political party, because, at some point, we're going to rise up and not accept it. We're just not going to allow it to happen.

But I -- there's no question that he's defining prosperity down. I mean, his objective is to undo the Reagan tax cuts. Now if his objective is to undo the Reagan tax cuts, I guess those are really big tent moderate ideas, huh? We know Obama is a left-wing radical. He takes a look at anything right-wing and he wants to destroy it.