RUSH: It was either Holder or somebody who said that when he hears language, “take back our country,” that’s racist. That means somebody’s gotta get rid of the black president and the black attorney general; take our country back from ’em. We played these sound bites, and I literally erupted in opposition.

This has nothing to do with race.

This whole notion of taking back the country? Not only conservatives said it, but Mrs. Clinton has said it. Howard Dean has said it. Any number of Democrats have said it. We played the sound bites. But the point is that I told Sunny Hostin on the program reacting to her that she doesn’t have the slightest idea what she’s talking about, that it has nothing to do with race.

Here’s the bite, and they played this last night. They brought the same guest list back. They brought back Sunny Hostin, and they brought back Greg Anthony, and they added The Forehead to the panel to outnumber Anthony (which was the reason for doing that). Plus The Forehead is considered a Rush expert, which did not make Carol Costello happy. She used to be CNN’s resident Rush expert.

So, anyway, here’s the clip that they played, and I know Burnett introduced it. Yeah, she played this clip, and then asked them all to respond to it.

RUSH ARCHIVE: This is about liberalism, taking our country back means regaining our freedom. Taking our country back means getting control of government and shrinking it and getting it more and more out of our lives, taking our country back means returning to the principles and the passions of the founding. Nothing to do with taking it back from a black president. … [T]he only relevance about Obama’s race is how it allows him to proceed without criticism. Everybody’s afraid to criticize him because people like you are gonna run around saying it’s all racist when race has nothing to do with this.

RUSH: And it never has. He’s the president of the United States. He has policies. He is implementing policies. We disagree with them. We think they are disastrous, they’re detrimental, they’re doing great damage to the country. That’s what getting our country back means — and I don’t even use the phrase, but I know what people mean who do, and they don’t have anything racist in their minds about this.

This is about saving the country as founded, restoring it. This is something very important to a lot of people, and these people don’t know what they’re talking about. They think they’re brilliant intellectuals, and they barely scratch the surface in understanding what people really think and what they believe.

They simply have knee-jerk reactions and they have various modes they assign to people that are just cliches, that are not rooted in any kind of critical thought whatsoever, much less in-depth analysis. So here these, the Smartest People in the World, say, “Oh, yeah, this is just a bunch of angry people mad they have a black president, trying to take the country back.” It has nothing to do with that.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with it. It’s irrelevant, as I say, other than the cover it provides Obama, which I predicted would be the case a year before he won the election. I had people calling here, you remember? People called here and said, “Rush, it might be good to vote for a black president to show that the country isn’t racist anymore.”

I said, “You have no idea. I know you’re thinking that would be the case, and it’d be great if it was. It would be an absolutely wonderful thing. But the people in the race industry are never gonna permit that. What’s gonna happen if Obama gets elected is any criticism of him is going to be said to be nothing but racism. It’s gonna get worse.”

I said, “It’s gonna exacerbate racial tensions. It’s not gonna solve anything,” and it’s been borne out by people like Sunny Hostin. When any substantive criticism of Obama is met with charges of racism, my point has been proven. So they bring Sunny Hostin back, and they play that clip, and then Erin Burnett says, “Now, are people afraid to criticize Obama in some cases, Sunny, because they’re afraid they’ll be called racist?”

HOSTIN: Rush Limbaugh, I almost don’t want to respond to give him this platform, but the bottom line is he himself has made race an issue when talking about President Obama. He’s called President Obama in 2007 Halfrican-American. In 2008 he says that he was a rookie whose only chance of winning was that he was black. In 2009 he described Obama’s entire economic plan as reparations. He’s called President Obama an angry black guy. He’s called an affirmative action candidate. So, for Rush Limbaugh, of all people, to say that race is not a part of this discussion and this narrative is laughable. It’s laughable, Mr. Limbaugh.

RUSH: Ms. Hostin, you can’t even stay on topic. You didn’t even answer her question. My point was that the only value that Obama’s racial component provides is that he’s immune from criticism, and you didn’t even address that, which is the fundamental thing being discussed here. It isn’t about race. Let’s go through these. Halfrican-American. I was quoting somebody, thought it sounded clever. He was a rookie whose only chance of winning was that he was black. Well, he had been in the Senate a hundred and some odd days, 148 days.

For them to deny the racial component is ridiculous. How many people did vote for Obama because of the historical nature of his campaign and his candidacy? There’s nothing untrue about that. But you see, this is where the handcuffs come in. Because you cannot even address this. I was speaking in purely political terms on all of this, but any time it involves race you are automatically disqualified if you happen to be conservative because people like Sunny Hostin are gonna just relegate it to racism and discount everything you say, on purpose, so they won’t be forced to have to address it.

He didn’t have any experience! He was elected president because one of our conservative commentators loved the crease in his slacks. Others thought that he was a like-minded intellectual. Ms. Hostin, take a look at the last five and a half years, measure it against Obama’s preparation and experience for the job and tell me where any of his prior experience has been put to good use. I take that back. It actually has, but not for the reasons you think. Community organizing is what we’ve had. He doesn’t know anything about health care. He doesn’t know anything about the automobile industry. He doesn’t know anything about the energy sector.

He doesn’t know anything about anything that he’s doing and the results are proof positive. Economic plan reparations? I’m not the one who uses the word. There are civil rights groups who are out there to this day demanding it, in one form or another. And who looked at it that way? I just listen to what the left says. That’s how I learn what they think. They tell me. Angry black guy? I think he is. He’s got a chip on his shoulder. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Affirmative action candidate? What is racist about any of this? They automatically assign it to racism when it has nothing to do with racism. I’m just one of the few unafraid to venture forth.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, can we again just remind everybody how all of this got started. This all got started by Eric Holder, once again, complaining that people who run around talking about taking back their country are doing so because of race. We were sitting here minding our own business and the attorney general comes along and calls us racists, and not for the first time. Too many people sit idly by and don’t react to it hoping it’ll just pass and go by. And I’m not gonna let the tag attach itself to me because it’s unworthy, it’s cheap, and it’s unjustified. It’s a cheap tactic that the left uses to silence people, but it wasn’t me that brought it up.

It was Eric Holder, and the president himself has done it, too, and the president’s associates and aides and the media are all out there saying there’s a racial component to “take back our country” and all this sort of stuff. Routinely who is it that’s accusing everybody of racism, sexism, bigotry? It’s the left that’s constantly bringing it up. It’s not at the forefront of anybody’s minds but theirs. So they bring in Begala, The Forehead, to talk about this, and here’s what he said.

BEGALA: I think these things are best done the way Sunny just did, with specifics. Let me give you one. Actually, I’d like to ask the other panelists, ’cause I think they have a really great variety of experiences here. When the former governor of Alaska, the vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party, Sarah Palin, said that the president was shucking and jiving about Benghazi, Colin Powell, a Republican, a conservative, a four-star general, a Bush administration cabinet member, Colin Powell went on Meet the Press and said, “You know, that’s racial.” He said that that was racial. I’m curious as to whether the panel agrees with General Powell.

RUSH: Okay, Sarah Palin, Obama shucking and jiving about Benghazi. General Powell, the titular head of the Republican Party, everybody’s role model, said that’s racist, she shouldn’t say that. So Greg Anthony is back. He was also there on Monday night, and here’s his reply to The Forehead.

ANTHONY: Let me ask a question of Paul Begala. What I want to know is, was it racist when the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that the president, because, you know, he has a chance to win because he doesn’t speak with a Negro dialect, was that racist?

BEGALA: No. By the way, neither is “take it back.” I wrote a whole book attacking George W. Bush called Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future.

BURNETT: I will merely hit pause there. We’re gonna have you all back again because this conversation obviously has a lot longer to go. And night after night we’ll continue to do this.

RUSH: Why pause it? Anthony was just nailing home a point there. Was Harry Reid racist when he said the president has a chance to win because he doesn’t speak with a Negro dialect, was that racist? And The Forehead says, “No, no,” and then, “by the way, neither is ‘take back our country.'” Well, hallelujah, so finally at the end of this segment the whole thing that got it started, even The Forehead has to admit it isn’t racist, leaving Sunny Hostin alone on a deserted island in this segment on CNN.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, look at me. In 2008 New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said of Democrat candidate Barack Obama who was running against Hillary, Andrew Cuomo said of Obama, “You cannot shuck and jive at a press conference.” Did anybody say that Andrew Cuomo had uttered something racist? Did Colin Powell get offended?