2009  cpac Speech Excerpt

By Rush Limbaugh

It remains one of the great speeches of the modern age, a 90-minute tour de force, delivered extemporaneously to a roaring, cheering crowd (“Rush! Rush! Rush!” and “usa!”) that responded with nonstop standing O’s. 

Thank you all. I can’t tell you how wonderful that makes me feel. It happens everywhere I go, but it’s still special here. [Laughter] I learned that Fox, God love them, is televising this speech on the Fox News Channel, which means, ladies and gentleman, this is my first ever Address to the Nation.

The opportunity here to address the nation is a serious one, and I want to take it seriously. I know that people are probably watching this who never have listened to my program and may not even really know what conservatism is. They think they do, based on the way we’ve been impugned and maligned. One of the things that is totally erroneous about me, and I just want to get this up front, is that I’m pompous, and that I am arrogant. Neither of these things are remotely true. I can tell you a joke to illustrate this.

Larry King passes away, goes to heaven. He’s greeted by Saint Peter, “Welcome, Mr. King, it’s great to have you here. I want to show you around.” King says, “I just have one question: is Rush Limbaugh here?” “No, he’s got a lot of time yet, Mr. King.” So Saint Peter begins the tour. Larry King sees the various places and it’s beyond anything we can imagine in terms of beauty. Finally he gets to the biggest room of all, with this giant throne. And over the throne is a flashing beautiful angelic neon sign that says, “Rush Limbaugh.” Larry King looks at Saint Peter: “I thought you said he wasn’t here.” He said, “He’s not. This is God’s room. He just thinks he’s Rush Limbaugh.” [Laughter] So you see, I’m not pompous.

Now seriously, for those of you watching on c-span as well and on Fox, I want to tell you who we all are in this room. I want to tell you who conservatives are. We conservatives have not done a good enough job of just laying out basically who we are because we make the mistake of assuming that people know. Well, what they know is largely incorrect, based on the way we are portrayed in pop culture, in the drive-by media, by the Democrat Party.

Let me tell you who we conservatives are: we love people. When we look out over the United States of America, when we see a group of people such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don’t see groups. We don’t see victims. We don’t see people we want to exploit. What we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work, with contempt. We don’t think that person doesn’t have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be, if certain things are just removed from their path — like onerous taxes, regulations, and too much government!

We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our Founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. We believe that the preamble contains an inarguable truth, that we are all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty — freedom — and the pursuit of happiness. Now, those of you watching at home may wonder why this is being applauded. We conservatives think all three are under assault.

We don’t want to tell anybody how to live. That’s up to you. If you want to make the best of yourself, feel free. If you want to ruin your life, we’ll try to stop it because it’s a waste. We look over the country as it is today, we see so much waste, human potential that’s been destroyed, by 50 years of a welfare state, by a failed War on Poverty.

We love the people of this country. And we want this to be the greatest country it can be. But we do understand, as people created and endowed by our Creator, we’re all individuals. We resist the effort to group us. We resist the effort to make us feel that we’re all the same. We’re all different. There are no two people in this world who are created in a way that they end up with equal outcomes. That’s up to them. They are created equal, to get the chance.

We don’t hate anybody. Let me deal with this head on. You know what the cliché is, a conservative is a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen of America, if you were paying attention, and I know you were, the racism in our culture was exclusively and fully on display in the Democrat primary. It was not us asking whether Barack Obama was “authentic.” What we were asking is: is he wrong? We concluded: yes! We still think so. But we didn’t ask if he was “authentically black.” We didn’t say, as some Southern Christian Leadership Conference leaders said, “Barack is not authentic, he’s not got any slave blood. He’s really not down for the struggle, but his wife does. So don’t expect the race industry to go away.” You may not even know this; it wasn’t reported in the drive-by media. The racism, the sexism, the bigotry that we’re all charged with doesn’t exist on our side. We want everybody to succeed.

You know why? We want the country to succeed, and for the country to succeed, its people, its individuals, must succeed. Everyone among us must be pursuing his ambition or her desire, whatever, with excellence, trying to be the best they can be. Not told, as they are told by the Democrat Party: “You really can’t do that, you don’t have what it takes, besides, you’re a minority, or you’re a woman, and there are too many people that want to discriminate against you, you can’t get anywhere. You need to depend on us.”

Well, take a look. Someone has to say this, and I am thrilled for the opportunity to say it in my first national address to the nation: take a look at all the constituency groups that for 50 years have been depending on the Democrat Party to improve their lives. And you tell me if you find any [improvement]. They’re still complaining about the same problems. Their problems don’t get fixed by government. And those lives have been poisoned. Those lives have been cut short by false promises, from government representatives who’ve said, “Don’t worry about it; we’ll take care of you. Just vote for us.”

For those of you just tuning in on the Fox News Channel or c-span, I am Rush Limbaugh and I want everyone in this room and every one of you around the country to succeed. I want anyone who believes in life, liberty, pursuit of happiness to succeed. And I want any force, any person, any element of an overarching Big Government that would stop your success, I want that organization, that element or that person to fail. I want you to succeed.

Now, let me speak about President Obama, one of the most gifted men that I have ever witnessed. He has extraordinary talents. He has communication skills that hardly anyone can surpass. It just breaks my heart that he does not use these extraordinary talents and gifts to motivate and inspire the American people to be the best they can be. He’s doing just the opposite. And it’s a shame. President Obama has the ability to inspire excellence in people’s pursuits. He has the ability, yet he pursues a path that punishes achievement, that punishes earners. He speaks negatively of the country. Ronald Reagan used to speak of a shining city on a hill. Barack Obama portrays America as a soup kitchen in some dark night. He constantly is telling the American people that bad times are ahead, worse times are ahead.

This is the United States of America. I’m in awe of our country, and I ask this question a lot as I’ve gotten older. We’re less than 300 years old. We are younger than nations that have been on this planet for thousands of years. We’re no different than any other human beings around the world. Our dna is no different. We’re not better just because we’re born in America. How did this happen? How did the United States of America become the world’s lone superpower, the world’s economic engine, the most prosperous opportunity for an advanced lifestyle that humanity has ever known? How did this happen? And why, pray tell, does the President of the United States want to destroy it? It saddens me.

The freedom that we spoke of earlier is the freedom, it’s the ambition, it’s the desire, the wherewithal, the passions that people have that gave us the great entrepreneurial advances, the great inventions, the greatest food production, the human lifestyle advances in this country. Why shouldn’t that be rewarded? Why is that now the focus of punishment? Why is that now the focus of blame? [Then-New York City] Mayor Bloomberg, ladies and gentlemen, resisting his Governor’s call for an increased tax on the rich in New York, had some astounding numbers. Eight million people live in New York; 40,000 of those pay roughly 60 to 70 percent of New York’s operating budget. He was afraid that if he raised taxes on those people that some of them might leave. Mayor, one already has, by the way.

Stop and think of this, though. If New York City, New York State, or Washington, D.C. were a business, these 40,000 people would be taken on golf tournament trips, they would be wined and dined, they would be thanked and they would be encouraged to keep it up. They wouldn’t be told they’re the problem. The people who have achieved great things, most of it is not inherited. Most wealth in this country is the result of entrepreneurialism, just plain old hard work. There’s no reason to punish it. There’s no reason to raise taxes on these people.

Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, have one responsibility, and that’s to respect the oath they gave to protect, defend, and follow the U.S. Constitution. They don’t have the right to take money that’s not theirs — and none of it is — from the back pockets of producers, and give it to groups which are going to advance the Democrat Party. If anybody but government were doing this, it would be a crime. And many of us think it’s bordering on that as it exists now.

President Obama is so busy trying to foment and create anger in a created atmosphere of crisis, he is so busy fueling the emotions of class envy, that he’s forgotten it’s not his money he’s spending. In fact, the money he’s spending is not ours. He is spending wealth that has yet to be created. And that is not sustainable. It will not work. This has been tried around the world. And every time it’s been tried, it’s a failed disaster.

What’s the longest war in American history? The War on Poverty essentially started in the 1930s as part of the New Deal, but it really ramped up in the 1960s with Lyndon Baines Johnson as part of the Great Society. We have transferred close to $11 trillion from producers and earners to nonproducers and nonearners since 1965. And yet, as I listen to the Democratic Party campaign, the poor are still poor and have no hope, and they’re poor for what reason? They’re poor because of us, because we don’t care, and because we’ve gotten rich by taking from them. That’s what kids in school are taught today. That’s what’s said in the media.

Know why they remain poor? Because their lives have been destroyed by the never-ending government aid that’s designed to help them, but it destroys ambition. It destroys the education they might get to learn to be self-fulfilling. And it breaks our heart. We can’t have a great country and a growing economy with more and more people being told that they have a right to the earnings of others. What worries me is that the Barack Obama Administration is actively seeking to expand the welfare state in this country because he wants to control it.

I want the best country we can have. We want the most prosperous people. We want to be growing. We want to lead the world. We want everybody to come here legally. We want this country to be so damn great and we just cringe to watch capitalism be assaulted and our culture be reoriented to where the people that make it work are the enemy. That’s not the United States of America. The people that make this country work, the people who’re paying their mortgages, the people getting up and going to work, striving in this recession to not participate in it, they’re not the enemy. They’re the people that hire you. They’re the people that are going to give you a raise.

Do you know that President Obama, in six weeks of this Administration, has proposed more spending than from the Founding of the country to his inauguration? Now, this is not prosperity. It is not going to create prosperity, and it’s also not going to advance or promote freedom. It’s going to be just the opposite. There are going to be more controls over what you can and can’t do, how you can and can’t do it, what you can and can’t drive, what you can and can’t say, where you can and can’t say it.

All of these things are coming down the pike, because it’s not about revenue generation to them; it’s about control. They do believe that they have compassion. They do believe they care. But see, we never are allowed to look at the results of their plans; we are told we must only look at their good intentions, their big hearts. The fact that they have destroyed poor families by offering welfare checks, no more father needed, the government’s the father, we’re not supposed to talk about that. We’re supposed to talk about their good intentions. They destroy people’s futures.

The future is not Big Government, self-serving politicians, powerful bureaucrats. This has been tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama, your agenda is not new, it’s not change, and it’s not hope. Spending a nation into generational debt is not an act of compassion.

All politicians are temporary stewards of this nation. It is not their task to remake the Founding of this country. It is not their task to tear it apart and rebuild it in their image. It is not their task, it is not their right, to remake this nation to accommodate their psychology.

Liberals define bipartisanship as our surrender. We’re not quitting. We are not giving up. The country is too important.