In a transcript from the Rush Limbaugh radio show dated Sept 28th, 2016, Mr. Limbaugh says that John Boehner was ousted from the third most powerful position in the United States. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Boehner, according to the US Constitution, was third in line of succession to the Presidency.
The cause for the Speaker to resign was not stated by the Mr. Boehner. But the headline to Rush Limbaugh’s transcript is that the third most powerful man in America was ousted by forces lead by Senator Ted Cruz. According to this theory, Senator Ted Cruz was an instigator and advocate for conservative Republican congressmen to consistently and persistently oppose Speaker Boehner’s leadership. He did this, according to Limbaugh, because Senator Cruz had no support for his conservative views among fellow senators. Therefore, he decided to go to the other house, Mr. Boehner’s house, and spoil it.
The quote from the transcript is the following:
“The point is, Ted Cruz was aware of all this, and he decided there was no way since he was so vastly outnumbered in the Senate, that what he instead did was to work with the conservative members in the House to strengthen them, to focus them. Not that they needed it, but just to form some unity and have a coordinated effort that was aimed at Boehner’s resignation, since Cruz was not gonna be able to engineer a similar thing in the Senate because he was basically a party of one.”
The transcript relates how Mr. Limbaugh rationalizes all of this as being a good thing. He has his opinion. Why not, he gets paid millions of dollars to tell us what he thinks. But if he is correct in his opinion of this event, I do not see it as credit to Senator Cruz but a shame. I guess you could credit Cruz with being savvy in understanding, as Limbaugh says, that in the Senate he is a party of one among 100 elected Senators. I guess you could praise him for being smart enough to know that he could gather the discontented, unhappy, miserable conservative congressmen who did not like Speaker Boehner and form them into a focused, united group of mostly freshmen congressmen who in their disgruntlement could work in a coordinated effort to oust the Speaker. I guess you can compliment him for subverting the office of Speaker of the House of Representative instead of fighting and winning better credibility in his own house, the Senate. But if Mr. Limbaugh is correct and according to the transcript, ” So there’s any number of people who you might…if you want to consider this in a doling-out-of-credit sense, Cruz is right there at the top.”
All of us wonder about the resignation of Speaker Boehner. He also will not stand for election to his congressional seat. He is retiring. It seems to me that there was a day not long ago when powerful forces were in motion to do something or other. The accomplishment of it, back then, may have involved the resignation or the retirement of some powerful person. However, I seem to remember, that there was a sense of grace and largeness on the part of the winners over the vanquished. It may have been called, back then, a sense of class or classiness. The winners were the first ones to come out and congratulate the defeated with words of praise for their service, and with a reminder of their many accomplishments and the excellence of their career and the honorable and praiseworthy things for which they stood. But according to Mr. Limbaugh, this sense of class and honorable victory is not true of the Value Voter’s Summit in Washington (DC) where, as Limbaugh states, (Senator Rubio is speaking) and says: …Just a few minutes ago Speaker Boehner announced that he will be resigning..AUDIENCE (wild Applause) Rush: Now, that (applause) went on and on and on. It was over the top. And this was something that a number of people have been attempting to make happen for months now going into years.
This writer is aware of the advertisements on Facebook and Internet to get rid of Speaker Boehner. I have always wondered who these disgruntled and discontented people were. I even imagined that the advertisements were planted by Democrats to defeat the Republicans. Now, I know that it is something (as Limbaugh states) ” a number of people have been attempting to do for years.” Really!? Is there a secret group of political outsiders trying to subvert the political process? Were there powerful people, like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Senator Cruz, trying to revolt and oust the Speaker of the House of Representatives. I am not one of them. In fact, I get very nervous around discontented, disgruntled, malcontents who are in positions of power and are fighting against their fellows who are in positions of power.
Are they so sure that they would do a better job? Are they so sure that if their man gets the power he will not use that power against the revolutionaries who put him or her there? Do they want the power for themselves? Are they willing to blame the so called leadership for their own inability to cooperate and focus on passing meaningful solutions to the nation’s problems- preferring to blame, as Mr. Limbaugh does, ” The …insider class, or ruling class or whatever you call it elite mind-set.” I wonder about people who are willing to subvert and collaborate in a focused, united, cooperative campaign against someone else, are they going to be better or worse than those they ousted? After all, they got to the top by subverting the authority of those they replaced. They can expect the same for themselves, unless they are the first to attack and remove the attackers.
Limbaugh goes on to state his agenda for the ouster of Majority Leader McConnell. He uses a quote from somebody else to hide behind, Gerald Selb, of the Wall Street Journal, who claims that the so called Tea Party forces are increasing their power and loosening the Republican (so called) establishment’s grip. So, after all, this transcript of the Rush Limbaugh show is actually a self proclaimed testimonial to Rush Limbuagh’s success at fostering the take over of the Republican party by his brand of conservatives?
Progressive Politics 