By Greg Lewis

Everyone's a prostitute in the eyes of Rush Limbaugh

It's Monday. In the wee hours of the morning, a key procedural vote passed, keeping health care reform on track. So Rush was ready to take on a weekend of Democratic deal-making:

LIMBAUGH: Prostitution has been legalized in Washington, D.C. Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Chris Dodd. He gets a hundred million. Vermont, Massachusetts. On and on it goes.

After a quick new Paul Shanklin parody, Rush declared that Obama was a “liar” based on the remarks he made about the bill earlier in the day. Rush said Obama “lied right to your face” when he cited the CBO report that the Senate health care bill would reduce the deficit by $132 billion over 10 years. This was an “out-and-out lie,” said Limbaugh. Although he gave no reason as to why he considered the CBO report -- which Obama accurately represented in his speech -- incorrect.

Then Rush took issue with Obama's “blaming” of the deficit on the Bush administration. Rush said that Obama doesn't have the “gonads” to stand up for what he's doing because he knows it's a disaster. He called Obama an “out-of-control little child who thinks he is the Messiah.” Rush also claimed that Obama spent more “deficit money” in one year than Bush did in eight.

After the break, Limbaugh said that we no longer have a representative republic, but instead, a rigged casino. But, added Rush, it would all be fine if Democrats were just “honest” about health care. If they “just” proposed a single payer system, posited Rush, “then we could have democracy,” because we would have had an “open” and “transparent” debate. After more labeling of Sen. Ben Nelson a “prostitute,” Rush said the accounting gimmicks being used in the bill would put Enron and Bernie Madoff to shame.

Rush on Sen. Nelson: “He's a prostitute”

Following another break, Rush read an Associated Press article on the winners and losers of the latest health care bill. Rush said the only winners in his mind were Democrats and the political class. Then he aired on audio clip of Sen. Harry Reid giving a speech before last night's cloture vote emphasizing the number of Americans who die because they lack insurance. Rush called this “outrageous” that Reid was claiming this, and asked for the “names” of the people who Reid claimed died during the time he made his speech. Classy. (And Reid's rhetoric at least had facts to back it up.)

All in all, Rush said the health care bill was about a loss of freedom, and that once it passes, virtually every aspect of our lives will be regulated by people like Reid and Obama. Rush added that Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins were “godsends” for holding their ground and voting against the bill (although after the commercial, Rush referred to both of them as dumb).

He closed out the hour with more attacks on Sen. Nelson, again calling him “a prostitute.” After airing a clip of Obama advisor David Axelrod on This Week talking about the health care bill, Rush said:

LIMBAUGH: What you have here is privately owned companies being run by people like Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and David Axelrod. You want to know what the definition of fascism is? You just heard it here from David Axelrod. And they're going to run these companies out of business, thereby necessitating the public option. Howard Dean will eventually be 150 percent happy as a clam.

Rush: “This is no longer a representative republic. This is not a democracy”

Hour two began with Limbaugh wondering how they would reconcile the Senate and House bills, since the House bill has a public option. After again calling the bill “fascism,” Rush spouted a conspiracy about how the health care pairs with the financial regulation bill under consideration. Rush said that the latter bill would allow the government to shut down any company that “simply on the basis that in their opinion” it is “too risky.” Rush seemed to imply these new rules would be used in conjunction with the health care industry.

Next up, Rush read from Frank Rich's column in yesterday's New York Times, in which Rich wrote that Tiger Woods was the person of the year for personifying the “consistent narrative” that most of us “have been so easily bamboozled.” Rush criticized Rich for not mentioning Barack Obama and how people ignored who he “hung around with” and “influenced him.” Rush repeated his claim from last week that just as Woods was unmasked, so shall that happen to Obama -- “the parallels are amazing.”

After the next break, Rush took a caller who was concerned that all her attempts to contact various politicians about her concerns over health care reform were falling on deaf ears and full inboxes. Rush responded to the caller:

LIMBAUGH: They're not listening to us. They have the polling data. You're wasting your time emailing them. You're wasting your time faxing them. You're wasting your time calling them. This is no longer a representative republic. This is not a democracy. You're nothing but a gnat. You're an inconvenience, especially if you disagree with what they're doing. You're somebody to be gotten even with. You're somebody whose mind isn't right yet. You are somebody that they're going to have to erase. They don't want to have to deal with your opposition.

Following another break, Rush posited this thought experiment: why not just make poverty illegal? Rush reasoned that this is what the Democratic health care bill does, since it mandates insurance. Rush argued that it would be “simpler” to just make poverty illegal than to create all the new bureaucracies that the health care bill does. He also criticized Harry Reid for claiming it was the Senate's responsibility to care for people, citing this as an example of Democrats using class envy. Later, Rush falsely claimed that there “aren't any benefits' in the first four years after the bill is signed into law, and argued that this would hurt Democrats in 2010.

Rush: The founding fathers ”rose up against a tyranny that is nothing compared to the tyranny in this health care bill"

The final hour of his show began with Limbaugh reading various economy-related articles, lamenting the media's coverage for being “propagandists” for Obama's agenda. After some more discussion of this, Rush asked that if this was such a historic moment, why are Democrats trying to pass the bill under the cover of darkness “like rats”?

Then Rush has a question for leftists out there “who hate America”: Isn't the U.S. hurting the rest of the world by sucking capital out of the world's economy by buying our debt so that Obama “can pretend to be dictator”? Rush followed this up with audio clips of Harry Reid responding to RNC chairman Michael Steele's comments likening the Senate bill to Congress “flipping the bird” at the American people. Rush asked where Reid's outrage was over a controversial Rock the Vote ad.

Back from another break, Rush proposed an RNC ad to counter the ad. It would feature “seasoned citizens” asking Obama why he would ration their health care. After more discussion of “wild guesses” of how much the health care bill would cost, Rush took a caller who asked Rush for leadership on what his listeners have to do. Limbaugh rambled on in platitudes for a few minutes before getting to this:

LIMBAUGH: The Founding Fathers created this country, they rose up against a tyranny that is nothing compared to the tyranny in this health care bill. The Founding Fathers created this country over much less than what is happening via health care and everything else in the Obama agenda.

Ah, okay. Rush concluded that the only answer is to defeat every liberal on every ballot because liberalism is a lie, a “destructive force,” and “un-American,” so it needs to be defeated. After another break, Rush offered some more “activism advice” for his listeners: use Zicam! Just another example of Limbaugh's true motives here. It's not in his best interest to accomplish conservatives' goals. It's in his best interest to keep his audience agitated so he can sell them products that could make them lose their sense of smell.

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

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: Prostitution has been legalized in Washington, D.C. Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Chris Dodd. He gets a hundred million. Vermont, Massachusetts. On and on it goes.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Yeah, yeah, so we're all supposed to be happy. Howard Dean's supposed to be happy because we're destroying an industry here. That's how he's supposed to be made happy. We've written it into the bill -- we are going to prohibit spending excessive amounts of money on CEO salaries, on administrative costs, on shareholder profits. We're going to make them non-profits, we're going to make sure they do everything -- this is fascism. What you have here is privately owned companies being run by people like Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and David Axelrod. You want to know what the definition of fascism is? You just heard it here from David Axelrod. And they're going to run these companies out of business, thereby necessitating the public option. Howard Dean will eventually be 150 percent happy as a clam.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: They're not listening to us. They have the polling data. You're wasting your time emailing them. You're wasting your time faxing them. You're wasting your time calling them. This is no longer a representative republic. This is not a democracy. You're nothing but a gnat. You're an inconvenience, especially if you disagree with what they're doing. You're somebody to be gotten even with. You're somebody whose mind isn't right yet. You are somebody that they're going to have to erase. They don't want to have to deal with your opposition.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: The Founding Fathers created this country, they rose up against a tyranny that is nothing compared to the tyranny in this health care bill. The Founding Fathers created this country over much less than what is happening via health care and everything else in the Obama agenda.