{"id":13243,"date":"2013-02-12T18:36:06","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T18:36:06","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2013-02-12T18:36:06","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T18:36:06","slug":"obama_s_lies_about_romney_worked_because_republicans_were_afraid_to_define_obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2013\/02\/12\/obama_s_lies_about_romney_worked_because_republicans_were_afraid_to_define_obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s Lies About Romney Worked Because Republicans Were Afraid to Define Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH: I was dead serious. We talked about this yesterday. The Democrats, Obama, they can\u2019t win in the arena of ideas. That\u2019s not what their campaigns are about. They can\u2019t even give voice honestly to their ideas, so what they do is simply discredit, tarnish, destroy, ruin, whatever word you want to use, their opponents. And they do it, in the case of the presidential campaign, there was two to three months in the spring to summer where all that Romney stuff ran. Romney didn\u2019t have any money. He couldn\u2019t use any of the money he\u2019d raised for the presidential campaign \u2019til after the convention, opted not spend any of his own. <\/p>\n

So all those ads about Romney being a felon — and Stephanie Cutter was out yesterday repeating it, by the way. And Romney still is a felon. And the ads about Romney not caring that some guy\u2019s wife died of cancer. Romney doesn\u2019t care about dogs, mistreated his dog, put him in a cage on the roof of the family station wagon in a on-the-road vacation. And I tell you, it showed up, the exit poll question. I told you this. They got the exit poll, the first wave at five o\u2019clock. There were two things, I said, “Oh, my God, we\u2019re gonna lose this.” Five o\u2019clock. One was that nearly 60% still blame Bush for the economy. I said, “Well, that alone is the election, if that\u2019s the case.” <\/line><\/p>\n

But then the big one, 81 to 19 in favor of Obama, the question was “Cares about people like me.” Now, how were they able to pull that off? I\u2019m telling you it was with their ad campaign that totally destroyed Romney. And in truth, Romney may be the most decent, full-fledged citizen of the United States ever to run for president. The most decent, most charitable, most self-less, most giving man and family ever to run was successfully portrayed as the devil incarnate when it came to what he would do to you if he were president. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any of question about it.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Here is Susan in San Antonio, Texas. I\u2019m glad you called. Great to have you here.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Thank you. It\u2019s such an honor to be able to speak to you.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I appreciate that very much. I understand.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Rush, my question to you is: If what you say is true, that the majority of people believe the lies that were told about Mitt Romney, what can a conservative candidate do to get elected in the future?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay, one thing: I don\u2019t believe a majority of people did. A majority of the people who voted, voted for Obama for a host of reasons. But, remember: Four million Republicans that did vote in \u201908 didn\u2019t vote in 2012, and that wasn\u2019t because of Obama\u2019s ad campaign about Romney. They didn\u2019t vote for Romney for different reasons. But the answer for your question — I don\u2019t want to cloud the issue — is very simple: You tell the truth about Obama. Do you realize that not Romney nor any Republican consultant ever ran a single ad telling the American people who Obama is? Not once!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When Romney goes out and says, “Hey, I like Obama! You know, he\u2019s a nice guy. He\u2019s just in over his head, or he\u2019s just a little misguided,” and you put that up against, “You are a felon and you don\u2019t care when guys\u2019 wives die and you don\u2019t care about poor people and you don\u2019t care about dogs,” what\u2019s gonna win? We were afraid to tell the truth about Obama because of his race. Now, the lesson learned here is that we are gonna have to define the opponent, in addition to defining ourselves. We let them pick our candidates, A, and then we let them define our candidates, while we sit around and believe this silly notion that if we are critical, the independents are gonna get mad.<\/p>\n

So we sit there and we play Mr. Nice Guy, and we say, “Ah, Obama, he\u2019s a really nice guy! He\u2019s a great family man! You know, but the president is just in over his head.” We didn\u2019t touch him on Benghazi, for crying out loud! We didn\u2019t go anywhere near it. We let Democrat media people moderate these debates. There\u2019s all kinds of stuff that could be done. It\u2019s called being aggressive, it\u2019s called being energetic, it\u2019s called being passionate, it\u2019s called articulating conservatism. You tell people who you are! You tell people how much you love them and how much you love this country and what you expect of them and what you expect of the country and greatness and exceptionalism!<\/p>\n

And then you tell them how all that\u2019s threatened by the Democrat candidate.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t do any of that! We didn\u2019t do any of it! So we\u2019re not even on the same playing field that Obama is on. A conservative can win. Ronald Reagan won two landslides without a supportive media because he had the ability to get to the American people over the heads of the media. But the way to respond if they\u2019re lying about you? A, you run out and you confront the people who are lying about you, and you tell the truth about yourself and then you tell the truth about them! There\u2019s another thing that we\u2019ve gotten into notion of believing: “A negative campaign doesn\u2019t work. The American people are turned off by negative campaigns.”<\/p>\n

The hell it doesn\u2019t work! This last campaign is paramount evidence that it does work. Negative ad campaigns work, but we have ourselves in a straitjacket. “We\u2019re not gonna go negative, and we\u2019re not gonna be critical of Obama. The independents don\u2019t like that. The independents want us to get along. Independents want bipartisanship. Independents don\u2019t like Obama being criticized.” Meanwhile, they can accuse us of rape, murder, incest, and that doesn\u2019t bother the independents! They just vote against us. Why do you think, folks, that Dr. Ben Carson is so popular right now?<\/a> Because Dr. Carson took it right to Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast!<\/p>\n

Dr. Ben Carson, in describing what he would do to fix health care, took it right to Obama and told him what\u2019s wrong with it. At the same time he was telling people what he would do. When he said, “Why do we need to punish the guy who\u2019s putting a million dollars in the pot? Why do we need to punish a guy making $10 million when he\u2019s already put a million in the pot? What do we need to punish the guy for? Why are we punishing people here?” You notice this guy is now becoming a hero? They\u2019re talking about him running for president, and he\u2019s saying, “Well, I\u2019m thinking about it.” You know what he\u2019s gonna do?<\/p>\n