Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One

by Zev Chafets

  1. There is a distinct singular American culture—rugged individualism and self-reliance—which made America great.As opposed to multiculturalism that wants to Balkanize the country and make it into a collection of equally valid cultural tribes. And did you ever notice that all these tribes are members of the Democratic Party coalition?

  2. The vast majority of the rich in this country did not inherit their wealth; they earned it. They are the country’s achievers, producers, and job creators.My brother got the family law firm. I made my dough myself. And you can, too.

  3. No nation ever taxes itself into prosperity.In fact, the rich are the ones who provide jobs for the rest of the population. Trickle-down economics works.

  4. Evidence refutes liberalism.Exhibit A: The peace and prosperity of the Reagan administration. Ronaldus Maximus himself said that liberal economists first look at reality and then see if they can make it work in theory.

  5. There is no such thing as a New Democrat.Which is what the triangulated Bill Clinton claims to be.

  6. The Earth’s eco-system is not fragile.The earth got along fine for billions of years and it started to break the year Al Gore published a book about it?

  7. Character matters; leadership descends from character.Churchill, Reagan, Thatcher—these are leaders with character. Liberals are horn-dogs who went to Woodstock, eat pizza in the White House, and hit on women they aren’t married to.

  8. The most beautiful thing about a tree is what you do with it after you cut it down.The world belongs to man, not the other way around. Without this essential belief, America would be an agricultural society instead of a world power, and you would be riding a horse to work.

  9. Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the twentieth century.For the information of every liberal historian who has written, is writing, or will write a book on Franklin D. Roosevelt and/or JFK.

  10. The 1980s was not a decade of greed but a decade of prosperity; it was the longest period of peacetime growth in American history.Look it up.

  11. Abstinence prevents sexually transmitted disease and pregnancy—every time it’s tried, and

  12. Condoms only work during the school year.Heh, heh, heh. Uncle Rush is just kidding.

  13. Poverty is not the root (“rut”) cause of crime.If it were, how come so many poor people are law abiding? In America, poverty should be an incentive to hard work, not to commit crime. Even Leonard Bernstein knew that, “I’m depraved on account of I’m deprived” is a phony excuse.

  14. There’s a simple way to solve the crime problem: obey the law; punish those who do not; and

  15. If you commit a crime, you are guilty.Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. Or, as I will someday discover, at least do the probation.

  16. Women should not be allowed on juries where the accused is a stud.This one goes out to all the empty-headed chicks who can’t see past superficial good looks and always fall for the lead-guitar player instead of the funny, pudgy DJ.

  17. The way to improve our schools is not more money, but the reintroduction of moral and spiritual values, as well as the four “R’s”: reading, ’riting, ’rithmatic, and Rush.Why, when I was a boy back in the ’50s in Cape Girardeau, they weren’t afraid to teach us the basics, including right and wrong. And by God I hated school. Ah, wait a minute . . . on to Number 18.

  18. I am not arrogant.But, like Muhammad Ali said, “I am the Greatest.” Did he really mean it? Do I? Yes, no, and you’ll never figure it out.

  19. My first 35 Undeniable Truths are still undeniably true.Except for maybe the one about the Steelers.

  20. There is a God.This is not an original observation. It is believed by roughly the entirety of humanity, minus Ivy League social scientists, Episcopalian bishops, and the Chi-Coms.

  21. There is something wrong when critics say the problem with America is too much religion.I am referring, of course, to old-fashioned Judeo-Christian religion, the stuff we learned in the Centenary Methodist Church—not the liberation theology practiced by hippie priests and anti-war activists in collars, or the fake piety of Democratic house pastors like The Revvvvernd Jesse Jackson.

  22. Morality is not defined by individual choice.Take this one seriously. I mean it. Moral relativism is too easy to be real morality.

  23. The only way liberals win national elections is by pretending they’re not liberals.Which is why they start talking like tax-cutting patriots in election years.

  24. Feminism was established as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.If one of your goals is (like mine) to offend and infuriate every self-respecting liberal woman in America, this one is a classic. Say it often enough and you will never be forgiven—or ignored.

  25. Follow the money. When somebody says, “It’s not the money,” it’s always the money.The only true thing I ever read in the Washington Post.

  26. Liberals attempt through judicial activism what they cannot win at the ballot box.Teddy Kennedy made Judge Bork look like a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Robert Byrd, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, tried to turn Clarence Thomas into Bigger Thomas. They wouldn’t go to all this trouble to get liberal activist judges if they had a majority.

  27. Using federal dollars as a measure, some cities have not only been neglected, but poisoned with welfare dependency funds.This one is so true that even Bill Clinton is coming around. Thank God for Rudy Giuliani.

  28. Progress is not striving for economic justice or fairness, but economic growth.A rising tide lifts all boats. This is true. I’ve seen it happen on the Mississippi River.

  29. Liberals measure compassion by how many people are given welfare. Conservatives measure compassion by how many people no longer need it.And by how few welfare recipients vote Republican.

  30. Compassion is no substitute for justice.O. J. Simpson. Case closed.

  31. The culture war is between the winners and those who think they’re losers who want to become winners. The losers think the only way they can become winners is by banding together all the losers and then empowering a leader of the losers to make things right for them.Even I am not sure what I mean by this.

  32. The Los Angeles riots were not caused by the Rodney King verdict. The Los Angeles riots were caused by rioters.In any long list of truths you will find a certain amount of filler. This is filler.

  33. You could afford your house without your government if it weren’t for your government.You may not believe this but someday—ten or fifteen years from now, into the next millennium—you will discover what I am talking about.

  34. Words mean things.I should know; I use ten thousand a day on the air and everyone understands me perfectly. Double-talk and nuance are for people who don’t want to come right out and tell you what they believe.

  35. Too many Americans can’t laugh at themselves anymore.And you humorless liberals know who you are.

  A lot of the new Undeniable Truths were obviously there for shock value or humorous effect, but at their core was a prescription for electoral victory in 1994 and beyond. To win, the Republicans needed to revert to Reaganism, with its belief in small government, lower taxes, less social welfare, tougher law enforcement, and a sense of America as a great and exceptional country with the power to keep the world safe for itself and for its friends. “The only way liberals win national elections is by pretending they’re not liberals,” Limbaugh said. It was time to go back to the bedrock principles of capitalism and individualism that characterized the reign of Ronaldus Maximus.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE HONORARY FRESHMAN

  Everyone expected the Republicans would make some gains in 1994. The party out of power usually does. But Limbaugh saw an opportunity to seize control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the start of the Eisenhower administration. His strategy was to take the election national. Rush’s audience provided the GOP with the means to reach into almost every congressional district in the country with a unified daily message. Thousan
ds of fired-up “Dittoheads” (as Rush’s fans are known) can’t swing a presidential election, but they are enough to nominate conservatives and help them beat Democrats in much smaller congressional districts.

  Six weeks before the 1994 election, one of Limbaugh’s old friends and sometimes rival, Newt Gingrich, gathered a group of fellow conservative House hopefuls and issued a manifesto: the Contract for America. It offered a ten-point legislative program that candidates promised a Republican-led House would pass within one hundred days. These initiatives included introducing a constitutional amendment to require the federal government to balance its budget; a tough anti-crime package; a prohibition on welfare payments to mothers under the age of eighteen and a requirement that able-bodied recipients go to work; an “American Dream Restoration Act,” with a five-hundred-dollar-per-child tax credit and repeal of the marriage tax penalty; a cut in financial support to the United Nations; weakening product liability laws to discourage frivolous litigation; tax adjustments and cuts for small business; the introduction of a constitutional term-limit amendment for senators and representatives; and “family values” legislation that would provide incentives for adoption, discourage abortion, increase parental control of education, and enact tougher anti-pornography laws. Finally, Clinton’s 1993 tax hike on Social Security would be repealed.

  These ideas had been floating around conservative circles for a long time. Many were in Ronald Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union message. George H. W. Bush had set them aside. Now Gingrich was reviving them, at least as campaign rhetoric. Limbaugh had no direct role in drafting the contract, but it couldn’t have happened without his vociferous cheer-leading for the return of Reaganism to the Republican Party. “Rush was talking about the elements of the Contract for America before there was one,” says Karl Rove.

  Two months before the election, Limbaugh predicted victory. “Historians will remember 1994 as a watershed year in American politics,” he said. “This was the year that modern liberalism, the ideology dominating nearly every important cultural and political institution in the country, tipped its hand, revealing its deep insecurity. Liberals are terrified of me. As well they should be.”

  Limbaugh had set his sites on Congress as far back as 1992, when the House Bank was caught allowing representatives to kite checks with impunity. Limbaugh dramatized the scandal with a radio skit.

  Soft music. A mellifluous ANNOUNCER intones: And now, another Capitol Hill moment.

  YOUNG TELLER: I’m working behind the counter at the bank when in comes another freshman congressman. He puts five hundred dollars in his new checking account. Boy, you should have seen the look on his face when I told him that five hundred dollars in the Capitol Guild checking account is unheard of. Congressmen never keep that kind of money in the bank.

  CONGRESSMAN: So this kindly teller tells me that my five hundred dollars is worth sixty to a hundred thousand dollars in check-writing privileges. Until that moment I never realized how much I was going to like living in Washington. Heh, heh, heh.

  ANNOUNCER: Capitol Hill Bank for personal service.

  TELLER: I like to really get involved with my customers. Why, once a congressman called me from this big drinking party he was throwing. Said he needed some more checks. So I went to the party with a box of checks. Why, he even paid for that party with one of those checks. I felt like I really made a difference.

  CONGRESSMAN: I don’t remember much about that party, but I do remember my Capitol Hill bank associate, he really saved me. You know, people like Ted Kennedy can rack up quite a bar tab. Capitol Hill Bank made me look like I had money and influence. You don’t get that kind of treatment from a bank very often. Capital Hill Bank.

  ANNOUNCER: Capitol Hill Bank, for worry-free check cashing.

  The bit took what might have been an inside-the-Beltway embarrassment and turned it into a national story everyone could understand. Eventually six people were convicted of felony charges and twenty-five more were singled out by the House Ethics Committee. All but four were Democrats.

  Limbaugh also used satire on Illinois Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, one of the most entrenched and powerful liberal Democratic committee chairmen in the House. Rostenkowski was accused of using the Congressional Post Office to launder money, just the sort of arcane piece of business that powerful lawmakers had been getting away with forever. Limbaugh turned it into theater.

  Soft music, ANNOUNCER intones: The Capitol Hill Post Office, over a hundred years of service.

  OLD CLERK: Yeah, I remember my first day behind the counter of the post office is something I’ll never forget . . . (changing to a young man’s voice) . . . Well, hello there Mister Congressman, is there something I can help you with there?

  CONGRESSMAN: Yes, I need a couple of them there first-class stamps.

  YOUNG CLERK: Is that all, sir?

  CONGRESSMAN: Ah now, can you cash this check for a thousand dollars? . . . Trust me, son, you can. You see, that’s just the way we do things up on the Hill.

  OLD CLERK: Congressmen come and go, and some have retired, but some things remain the same.

  SECOND YOUNG CLERK: Hello there, Mister Congressman, is there anything I can help you with?

  CONGRESSMAN: Yeah, check my mailbox.

  YOUNG CLERK: Just a check statement from your bank, sir.

  CONGRESSMAN: What check statement!?

  YOUNG CLERK: Ah, yessir, I’ll just tear it up right away.

  CONGRESSMAN: Good kid, good kid. Hey I need some postage stamps. Just one.

  YOUNG CLERK: Okay, that’ll be twenty-nine cents.

  CONGRESSMAN: Here’s a constituent’s check for five thousand dollars.

  YOUNG CLERK: And here’s your change, Congressman.

  CONGRESSMAN: And, kid, you keep that stamp.

  YOUNG CLERK: Hey, thanks.

  CONGRESSMAN (sotto voce): That way, if I’m indicted, he’s my accomplice. Heh, heh, heh.

  The laughter proved lethal. Rostenkowski was forced to resign his chairmanship, got indicted for mail fraud, lost his seat in 1994, and served fifteen months in jail before he was pardoned by President Clinton.

  Limbaugh’s anti-corruption kick was not an act of disinterested good government broadcasting. He was after Democrats, who controlled the House and supported President Clinton. It was his good luck that his political opponents, grown fat and sloppy after so many years in power, gave him such inviting targets.

  On November 8, the Republicans won a sensational victory. The GOP went from 176 seats to 230, enough to take control of the House. The Democratic Speaker, Tom Foley, was defeated in his own district, and Gingrich became the first Republican Speaker since Joseph Martin in 1953. Mary Matalin, who had served as a deputy campaign manager on Bush’s 1992 campaign, watched in awe as Limbaugh led the Republican bandwagon. “Rush was a market force in 1994,” she says. “I would go to political meetings all over the country and hear conservatives speaking the way he speaks, saying the things he says. The clarity he brought to issues got repeated back in questions from the audience. Back then, like now, along with Gingrich, he was one of the two most important conservatives in the country. Newt had come up with the plan, but Rush had sold it in every district in the country.” A month after the election, grateful Republican lawmakers held a dinner in his honor. Representative Barbara Cubin, a member of the freshman class from Wyoming, told Limbaugh that 74 percent of the nation’s newspapers had endorsed Democrats. “Talk radio, with you in the lead, is what turned the tide,” she said. Vin Webber, a former congressman from Minnesota, cited data from pollster Frank Luntz showing that people who listened to talk radio more than ten hours a week voted Republican three to one. “Those are the people who elected the new Congress,” Webber said.

  The newly elected legislators presented Limbaugh with an honorary membership in the freshman class and a “Majority Maker” pin that was given out to first-term representatives.

  If Limbaugh was the winner of the 1994 election, Bill Clinton was
the loser. For Rush, that was one of the sweetest parts of the victory. He and Clinton were natural enemies, and like all natural enemies they knew one another at first sight. Both men came from the same part of the country—Hot Springs, Arkansas, and Cape Girardeau, Missouri, were almost equidistant from Memphis. As young guys they both burned with ambition to escape the provinces and fulfill their destiny on a great stage. But that’s where the similarities ended. Clinton was gregarious, a joiner and a backslapper, emotionally intelligent; Limbaugh communicated best from an empty studio. Clinton used his brains and his charm to move up in the world, to rise above his embarrassingly outré mother, violent step-father, and trashy brother. Limbaugh had, for many years, traveled in social reverse, haunted by his father’s admonition that a dropout would never have any real status. Clinton was the ’60s, long hair, jeans, JFK, and McGovern, an FM kind of guy. Limbaugh, despite being five years younger than Clinton, was an older American, a product of the Eisenhower years, strictly AM.