The Fear of Government Driving This Presidential Race Is Real and It Is Justified

Monday - January 25, 2016

RUSH: The New Yorker has a cover story on Donald Trump.  I have not seen The New Yorker story so I don't know if The New Yorker is for Trump or not.  I can't tell.  Because this is actually a Mother Jones story (a leftist publication, a bunch of wackos themselves), and they're talking about the cover of The New Yorker magazine, which has got George Washington on it, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR.  And the point that Mother Jones is making is what is distasteful about Trump is not that he offends old-fashioned American values.  Trump is distasteful...

This is the leftists at Mother Jones: [W]hat is distasteful about Trump is not that he offends old-fashioned American values; Trump is distasteful because he taps into certain old-fashioned American values -- nativism, brash tough talk, slow-burning authoritarianism; family dynasties -- that have played a not-inconsequential role throughout our history." Trump embodies all of it.  Now, it's interesting the guys on the cover include Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt's considered by many to be one of our great presidents.

My grandfather loved Teddy Roosevelt.  My grandfather loved him, and he was a down-the-middle Republican like nobody else ever was.  He loved Teddy Roosevelt.  He loved Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, interviewed him on his 100th birthday in Kansas City at an American Bar Association meeting. He went on and on and on about Teddy Roosevelt. He was the greatest president ever because of the innovations that Roosevelt brought to the country -- among them, the Navy.  The thing about Teddy Roosevelt was a get-it-done kind of guy. 

Today it would be called slow burner or slow-burning authoritarianism, and of course Roosevelt's family dynasty and so forth.  But Teddy Roosevelt was big pro-America. I mean, going down there, building the Panama Canal, nativism and so forth.  Expanding federal lands, creating the National Parks and so forth.  Many people looking back on Teddy Roosevelt think of him as the first big-government president, but people back then loved him because he was pro-America, unabashed, America first always. 

So we have this New Yorker cover here.  Again, I don't know what The New Yorker story is because the story here about The New Yorker cover is from Mother Jones.  And it's Mother Jones analyzing Trump, not The New Yorker. So it's just the cover picture that I have here.  I don't have any idea what the New Yorker says.  I'll give you a flavor of this, as written by Mother Jones.

"Where to start?" That's Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and Abraham Lincoln," those are the guys on the cover, actually, "looking on in disbelief at the mess Trump is making of the American presidential election. ... Teddy Roosevelt backed a racist imperial war and said white women using birth control were committing 'race suicide' by turning their country over to less-fair-skinned hordes." I don't know Roosevelt ever said this. Mother Jones is quoting him on this.

"FDR, the architect of Japanese internment... I don't know what else to say about JFK other than that his personal life makes Trump look like Ned Flanders, and he started a land war in Asia we're still recovering from. George Washington owned people and bought an election by getting people drunk." So this is who Mother Jones is comparing Trump to.  These are interpretations of some of the greatest Americans who've ever lived.  Now, I don't know how many Trump supporters are gonna run into The New Yorker or Mother Jones.

But if they do, it's just gonna reaffirm their support for Trump to have him insulted this way, because this is not how people see Trump.  You know, one of the ways people see Trump and Ted Cruz -- and even to a lesser extent Marco Rubio. One of the identifying characteristics of the American electorate, and I think this would probably be true even of some on the Democrat side, is fear.  There is genuine fear in this country.  But the question is: Fear of what?  For some people, the fear is they're out of work and they can't find a job, so the fear is economic. 

But even people who have jobs, even people who have careers, they're afraid.  What are they afraid of?  They're afraid they're going to lose their jobs.  They're afraid they're gonna lose their 401(k)s.  They are afraid they're gonna lose everything, because they look at trends in the done and they see everything going in the wrong direction.  The Democrats are afraid and some of the Democrat base is afraid that the Republicans are gonna win and roll back gay marriage and roll back Obamacare and roll back all this liberal socialism that they think they've got and still hasn't made them happy. 

But there's another fear that isn't much spoken of. I think these other fears are legitimate but there's a fear greater. It'd maybe even be the umbrella under which all these other fears fall.  And that fear -- and it's big -- is of the government.  This fear of government runs pretty much throughout the Republican base.  It's a legitimate fear.  It's embodied by every time Obama and the Democrats start bellyaching about guns. "You know, that's constitutional! That's the Second Amendment." They know that if Obama's serious, he's gonna do something that violates the Constitution and that the Constitution won't stop him. 

It's a fear.  Others fear the unstoppable growth of the federal government and what that means.  Others are afraid of the endless regulation coming out of the Washington that's not backed up by legislation, that is nothing but punitive.  People do not feel joined with their government, and they certainly don't feel that there is a unified sense of purpose from citizen to government.  The fear is government versus citizen.  The Republican Party has no way of relating to that.  They pooh-pooh it.  They make fun of people afraid of government. 

To them, that strain of the Republican base or conservatism are the real kooks.  "What do you mean, afraid of government?  You tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist!" That's what they think.  But the fear of government's real.  The fear of government's justified.  You might be IRS and the Tea Party groups which were denied tax-exempt funding.  That was obviously political.  There are a lot of people with a legitimate fear of government.  If you have a job and are afraid of losing your job, what's the real fear?  The government's gonna mess things up or they're gonna purposefully do it or something's gonna happen.

But somebody not responsible is in charge of the economy and it is making a mess of it.  The umbrella fear is fear of government.  Well, who out there happens to be talking about the incompetence and incapability of the government louder than anybody else is?  That would be the Donald -- and Cruz as well. But with the Donald, it's an identifying characteristic.  He never even utters the words.  I caller a moment ago said, "I never hear Trump talk about big government!"  He does all the time.  He just doesn't use the words. 

He talks about liberals all the time, doesn't use the word.  He talks about conservatives all the time, doesn't use the word. It's exactly the advice Pat Buchanan was given back in 1996. "Go ahead; do everything. Do not call yourself a conservative, Pat.  It'll narrow your identity. You don't need any help from other..." Pat couldn't do it. He was so tied to the conservative movement and party, he couldn't do it.  But Trump can, since he's never really been associated with either political party.  It's an open question. 

But everything Trump talks about, much of what he talks about, is rooted in opposition in one way or another the things happening in government, to people, from government.  And that is if the media were to go out and start interviewing people about this and delving into why you support Cruz, or why do you support Trump, or whatever. If they kept digging -- and the media won't because they don't understand it, either.  All these people, government is loved by the Democrats.  The media loves government.  My gosh, it's where they all make their money. 

It's where they all make their living.  The idea government getting smaller?  Unacceptable! Not possible.  Will not happen.  Same thing with the Republican establishment.  Their jobs depend upon a big, thriving, active government.  But one of the primary tenets of conservatism -- small government, out-of-the-way government -- is as much a part of this campaign as if somebody were mentioning the words each and every day.  The difference is, the words are not being mentioned, but the message is getting through.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Jonathan in Naples, Florida.  Great to have you on the program, sir.

CALLER:  Hey, how you doing?

RUSH:  Good.  Thank you.

CALLER:  Just wanted to say, I mean, I'm feeling the same way I did back in about '08. When I was in school in Tallahassee, I ended up leaving the country after the BP oil spill. I got a settlement from them and I ended up leaving to go down to Honduras, spend a couple years down there 'cause I couldn't handle what was going on here.

RUSH:  Wait a minute.  Why did you leave after the BP oil spill?

CALLER:  Well, Obama got elected and I was going off to college in Tallahassee, and after all that, I couldn't -- you know, all this craziness that was going on with that and --

RUSH:  You mean it was Obama's election and all that that drove you out?

CALLER:  Yeah, yeah, it just bummed me out, and then after the BP oil spill I was living down in Naples, Florida, and I got a $10,000 settlement, I took that and went --

RUSH:  I see, okay.

CALLER:  -- went down to Central America.

RUSH: Gotcha.

CALLER:  And after that, you know, I came back about three years down there, and now with this election I'm feeling the same way.  I feel a little bit of hope, though, with Trump running.

RUSH:  You feel a little bit of hope with Trump.

CALLER:  Little bit of hope.  I feel like he will actually go in there and clean a little bit of house and get some new people that aren't career politicians in there.

RUSH:  So you wouldn't mind a little authoritarianism in that way?

CALLER:  I guess you could put it that way.  Just someone who will let people know that we're not gonna put up with some of the same BS that's been going on.

RUSH:  One of the fears that I have seen people register on our side is they oppose Obama and his executive actions, his executive orders.  But the fear is that they would support one of their own acting in the same way but to erase what Obama has done.  And then they say, that would be very bad.  We can't have people on our side also supporting authority, even for good, no matter what the purpose, we can't have people who think that's how Washington works.  But we might have, folks, given the degree of frustration people have with the country hanging in the balance.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  This is Derek in Houston.  It's great to have you, sir.  Hello.

CALLER:  Yes, sir, thank you.  The problem I have with Trump --

RUSH:  The problem you have with Trump.

CALLER:  No, sir, I'm saying the problem I have with Trump, my apologies.  The problem I have with Trump is that when you have a candidate that builds his support based on the cult of personality and has blind followers who love him because of that instead of his ideas, and even worse when that personality is so different from his past personality, you set up a president just like Obama who will bend to the establishment party leaders instead of leading himself. 

We don't need a celebrity Republican president as much as we didn't need a celebrity Democrat president.  We need a president with a proven record of being who he is and doing what he says.  I think we need a man like Ted Cruz who did what he said he would do in Texas, did what he said he would do in the Senate.

RUSH:  Yeah, that's true, he did.  I don't disagree with you.  I mean, Ted Cruz does not vacillate.  He doesn't disappoint. He doesn't say one thing and go do the other.

CALLER:  You asked the previous caller, sir, why does it matter to most voters.  And my answer to that would be Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, and great minds discuss ideas."

RUSH:  That's why this show is so successful, that's exactly right.

CALLER:  I think most voters just go for the personality they see at the debate and they don't go further.

RUSH:  No wrong answer here.  Don't infer a tone here in my question.  So you think that most of Trump's support is not related to issues or substance that he has mentioned, but rather that he's The Celebrity Apprentice host?

CALLER:  I agree, sir, I do.  And I believe that Trump kind of verified that himself recently by saying if he shot somebody in Times Square or whatever, that no one would care.  That's because they love him because of his persona, which he's developed to be a candidate.  It's not who he truly is.  I think if Trump thought it was more profitable to be a Democrat and he could gain more power as a Democrat, he would, and he tried that.  But today, being as smart as he is, he sees a better chance as a Republican.

RUSH:  Okay.  Well, let's see if your criticism hurts Trump at all.  It happened on the Rush Limbaugh program.  You just took a pretty good swipe at Trump.  Let's see if you're able to bring his poll numbers down tomorrow. 

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Just a quick question here going out to think about.  Would you say that Trump is conservative on immigration, national security, and jobs?  You would?  You think Trump's conservative on all three of those?  Those may be some of the biggest three, right?  You think he's conservative on that?  Okay.  And he wants to get rid of Obamacare.  That's four things.  Okay, I'm just asking.  I'm just asking.  That's all I'm doing.