Now, let’s go to the audio sound bites. I went through the roster here as I got it this morning, looking for what had happened when I was gone. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised anymore. But I’m shocked, once again the number of sound bites that are about me over the last ten days or so. Let’s start out with what I said, because the media’s claiming that I am the reason Santorum has caught fire in Iowa. This is one of many times I said this, by the way, but this is from December 21st.
RUSH ARCHIVE: On the substance and the issues and the policy, there’s one thing I know about Santorum, and I look at the endgame of this. The campaign is one thing and the troubles that people have, but I know that if Rick Santorum were elected president I wouldn’t have one doubt any day what he would be fighting for, not one, and it would be great if he could get there.
RUSH: Okay. So that’s December 21st. And I said it a couple or three other times, and I also said it about Bachmann, and I said it about a number of other people who were not the top tier trying to point out that we had a lot of potential in this field. So let’s go CNN’s Reliable Sources as a start. This is Sunday morning, the host, Howard Kurtz, is talking to the Washington Post political correspondent Nia-Malika Henderson. Not to be confused with Mika Brzezinski. This is Nia-Malika Henderson about the Republican primary and Santorum, and Howard Kurtz said, “Is there a tendency, we saw this with Herman Cain and others, for the press to prematurely write off somebody who is in single digits, who is actually doing the old-fashioned shoe leather thing of going out and meeting voters? So many candidates have blown off in Iowa this year and then to be shocked when they actually get some traction?”
HENDERSON: It looks like he’s obviously surged. He’s in first or second place. People are predicting that he could win this whole thing. I will say that Sarah Palin seemed to predict this a while ago, and there was all this chatter among hardcore conservatives, Rush Limbaugh to be one, to say that Santorum was a guy that should really be looked at.
RUSH: Ah, ha-ha-ha, so the most talked about radio talk show host, including as well as the most listened to. Here’s The Forehead, Paul Begala, on CNN last night Anderson Cooper 360. Cooper said, “The Santorum surge, how surprising is it to you?”
BEGALA: It’s stunning. There have been seven front-runners in Iowa. Three of them are not even in the race anymore, and Santorum seemed like the only guy who never did lead. Santorum just wasn’t in the fire. He was too far back, so nobody was shooting at him, and, now, God bless him, he’s surging. I actually think he’s gonna win.
RUSH: So, there is The Forehead thinking Santorum could win this today. Not a vote has been cast yet. The media, Howard Kurtz, had it right in his question, they had this decided. They had this decided weeks ago, Romney, it was all over with. And I’ve always been stunned by that. Why would you bother counting up votes when there haven’t been any, going strictly by poll data? Well, we know the answer. They had their preferences. But jumping the gun, trying to predict the outcome before a vote or a cauci reference is ever even taken place.
Here’s last night in Altoona, Iowa. This is Santorum himself speaking.
SANTORUM: You want to make a difference here in Iowa? You can do what Iowans do best: You can ignore what the pundit class… You can ignore what the moderate Republicans who tend to always say, “Oh, we gotta win! We gotta win and we need a moderate to win,” and Iowa will stand up and say, “No, we need to be principled to win.”
RUSH: Yeah, so he’s… I’ll tell you something else: If you listen to Rick Perry, I would be surprised if Rick Perry did well. He’s doing well in TV appearances. I’ve always, on this program, said that I wouldn’t mind if Perry caught fire. My point is this is nowhere near over. Despite the conventional wisdom and despite what the people in the media would like to have you believe, it isn’t over — and what happens in Iowa does not signal the end of anything. This could go on for months!