Limbaugh: People are “surprised that John Lewis would sell out the civil rights movement” for health care reform
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
By Adam Shah
Starting off the first full week of April, Rush zeroed in on a few main themes: defending his previous description of the Obama administration as a “regime,” attacking the health care legislation and President Obama's agenda, and defending tea partiers. Regarding his “regime” comments, Rush said today: “It is a regime. They're governing against the will of the people. The election be damned...the constitution be damned.” Rush later stated: “If you don't like regime, I'll call them a junta.” Rush claimed that the Obama regime was out to ensure that there was a “permanent underclass” by passing health care reform and other legislation, adding that there was no permanent underclass “until we got LBJ's Great Society.”
Continuing to attack the health care legislation and defend tea parties, Rush claimed that we've learned that no one hurled racial epithets at African American members of Congress and that no one yelled anti-gay epithets at Rep. Barney Frank. And Rush attacked Rep. John Lewis for asserting that he had heard racial epithets coming from protestors. Rush said that people are “surprised that John Lewis would sell out the civil rights movement” for health care reform. Rush also demanded that Republicans not run on a “repeal and replace” health care platform but instead use a “just repeal it” platform.
Rush's audience was also treated to long quotations from a National Review Online post reporting that Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe believes that the American people will not stand for the health care reform bill. Rush also quoted responses from other conservatives, including one person who stated: “Rahe talks about the American Revolution and so on. But the nation's ethnic makeup is different now, for one thing. Way more residents/invaders/settlers from 'manyana' cultures. More illiterates, more people with no sense of history.”
Rush asked his listeners to weigh in on the debate tomorrow.
Some highlights from today's show:
Rush declares jobs report “a sham” by pushing myth that “most of the job growth is Census”
Limbaugh: “If you don't like regime, I'll call them a junta”
Limbaugh on “repeal and replace” effort against health care reform: “Just repeal it. Just repeal it”
Rush says there was no “permanent underclass” before “LBJ's Great Society”
Rush says “girly-man” Obama “looks like a girl out there” and “Castro can at least throw a baseball”
Limbaugh on LGBT Democrats: “There are others?”
Rush explains he's been comparing Obama to the Idi Amin, Chavez, and Castro regimes
In the last ten minutes of the show, Rush played audio of Michelle Obama in 2008 saying that "[w]hen we took our trip to Africa, and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test for the very point of showing folks in Kenya that there is nothing to be embarrassed about in getting tested. And we did it as a couple." Rush responded: “So, she called Kenya her husband's home country. Well, you know, this is reverberating all over the place out there.” Soon thereafter, Rush took a caller who said that Obama was really similar to the “Nazi regime.” Rush said he was not thinking of Hitler. He was thinking of Idi Amin, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro. Right-wing commentators often smear Obama with comparisons to Chavez and Castro, but Rush takes it to another level with Idi Amin. Amin -- the former Ugandan dictator -- reportedly caused 300,000 people to be killed including cabinet ministers, Supreme Court judges, educators, priests, and others. According to his New York Times obituary, Amin also “declared that Hitler had been right to kill six million Jews” and exiled 40,000 Ugandans of Asian origin.
Mike Burns contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.