They couldn’t have made Mondale a winner, even though they made Clinton a winner. Clinton was the one who made himself the winner in 1992 and 1996, and Kerry just doesn’t have that ability — and they’re not saying that, I am. So Marybeth Cahill and Tad, “Perhaps a Tad Too” Devine, have been relegated here to the corner desks and Carville, Begala and Joe Lockhart are taking over. Now, the Kerry campaign is very upset that this call from Bill Clinton to Kerry in which Clinton said (Award-winning Clinton impression), “Hey, look, pal. Let me give you a piece of advice right now because I’ve been watching this. You know what? There’s a lot of people out there thinking I want you to lose, dude, because it sets up Hillary. John, I want you to understand I’m going into open heart surgery here in mere moments, but I’m taking time out from that to talk to you. Now, look everybody says that I want you to lose, but the fact of the matter is if you lose bad, I’m going to get blamed because I didn’t help out. So I’m going to help out. You’ve got to stop talking about Vietnam, John. You beat it to death. You’ve kicked the horse one too many times. You’ve got to go back to Iraq. Come out with something else that you can stick with a couple weeks here instead of changing every other day,” and so this call leaked out.
The call leaks out, and there are three people who knew of this call — Joe Lockhart — well, aside from Clinton and Kerry — Joe Lockhart, Marybeth Cahill, and I forgot who the third one was, but the New York Times had the details of the call and it cannot be very positive news in the Kerry campaign that this call leaked, that the details of the call leaked, because what it does, it obviates the whole Kerry staff. Now, I want to remind you again that Rich Galen in an interview that’s in the current issue of the Limbaugh Letter said that this was exactly what was going to happen, because Kerry is a senator. Senators have different modus operandis than do governors, for example. That’s why most of the presidential candidates you see lately have not come from the Senate and most have come from the ranks of governors. The reason is governors delegate. His example was this: a governor, if he wants to change the way license plates are handed out. Let’s say there’s a big bureaucratic screw-up at the state DMV. Well, the governor will not go down to the DMV office and show the clerk at the window how to properly pass out a new license plate. They just delegate somebody to go do it.
A senator, upon hearing that there’s problems would go to every DMV place personally, look at the policy, have a meeting, and go tell everybody there how to hand out license plates. The governor says, “I don’t have time for that. I’ll delegate this,” and so the Kerry campaign is falling right into pattern. They’re hiring all kinds of people and there are interoffice squabbles or squabbles going on in the campaign now. There are ego battles. Who gets the credit. Who gets the blame. Who gets to fly on Kerry’s plane with him and who doesn’t. Who is now portrayed as the saviors of the day and who are now portrayed as the people who can’t get it done. And that’s the current Kerry campaign staff, the Marybeth Cahills and the Tad “Perhaps a Tad Too” Devine. My new knickname. You like that? Perhaps a Tad Too Devine. (Laughing.) On a roll here today. But anyway, these people have just been obviated. They’ve been swept aside and the impression has been left that they are incompetent and they can’t get it done, and the one thing that hasn’t happened here — and although it’s starting to — the one thing that hasn’t happened is that the candidate, other than on this program, is not being focused on as maybe the problem. What can a staff do?
Let’s take a look at Iraq. How many different versions of an Iraq policy does Kerry have? The latest one, it’s in the stack here, he’s now going to get us out of there in four years, right? Now, last week, Kerry was going to get us out in six months. Two weeks ago. Last week was the Republican convention. Two weeks ago he was going to get out in six months and the French and the Germans are going to come in and take over for us. They’re going to die so we don’t have to die while we get outta there. Now Kerry says he’s going to get out in four years. Well, the problem is, if you’re the campaign staff and you’ve got a candidate who can’t stick to one statement for even three days, what can you possibly do with it? If you’re the staff, doesn’t matter who you are. Now, I call this a hostile takeover of the Kerry campaign by the Clinton team, and I’m deeply suspicious of this, because we all know that Hillary has got eyes on 2008. We all know that Kerry stands in the way of that. We have the leak of this phone call from Clinton to Kerry, and now we’ve got all these Clinton people in there supposedly to save the day, and Kerry’s big piece of advice from Clinton was to stop all this talk of Vietnam. So Kerry, I guess, is taking Clinton’s advice and he’s got a new battle cry out there, new rallying cry, “W stands for wrong.” That’s like saying “P stands for psychology!” There is no W in wrong.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: John Kerry, the ultimate flip-flop. It’s one thing to flip-flop on the issues. I mean, the issues are the issues. The issues are really not people. But John Kerry has just flip-flopped on his campaign staff. These poor people! I want to go on record here today, as a compassionate conservative. Oh, by the way, a lot of you people think that I’m wrong when I say, “There’s no W in wrong.” I’m talking about phonetically. I mean, when you say, “W is for wrong,” I mean, what a rallying cry! Can you just see that one picking up out there on the campaign stump? “W is for wrong!” But it’s a gaffe if you ask me. “W is for wrong” doesn’t work because the W in wrong is silent. The word wrong starts with an R. I don’t know too many people who say “w-rong.” You go out there, and you say, “rong.” It’s like saying, “P is for psycho.” (Laughing.) You wouldn’t do it. So I’m wondering if any of his advisors, his growing list of advisors, his ever expanding list of advisors, his advisors from the Kennedy side who he’s just flip-flopped on — I’ll get to that in a minute — his advisors from the Clinton side who have just performed a hostile takeover, his advisors from the New York Times side, did anybody ever tell Senator Kerry that W for wrong doesn’t work? 
Well, you can blame the speechwriters. He’s already blamed the speechwriters. He can’t blame the speechwriters. He’s blamed the conductor on the train. He blamed his convention scripters for writing a dull convention compared to the Republicans. I think the ultimate flip-flop here is that Kerry has flip-flopped on his campaign staff. He’s turned his back on them. These are the people — I’m a compassionate conservative kind of guy — and these people have a tough job making this guy look human, making this guy look real, you know, getting this guy’s message out when he doesn’t know what his message is. No, seriously. These people have had almost an unsurmountable task if you ask me. They have a campaign that is based largely on “anybody but Bush,” not “Kerry instead of Bush,” but anybody but Bush. They have a campaign largely based on seething, raging hatred for Bush, not adoring, inspiring love for their candidate, John Kerry. The guy is a deeply flawed candidate, folks, and the people on his staff who have helped him secure the nomination have just been told they’re not good enough. They’ve been dumped for fumbling the response of Swiftvets. Can you believe this? I read this over the weekend.
Did you hear about this, Brett? John Kerry actually said somewhere in the press over the weekend that he was mad. He ordered his staff to get tough on the swift boat vets. (Doing Kerry impression) “I’m sitting here getting beaten up; you people need to go out there and hammer those people.” What are you doing? You’re the guy that can shut this down. You’re the candidate. He’s telling these people to go out and do all of these things, telling the conductor to make the train stop on time. The staff has been scolded for fumbling the swiftvet response. They’ve been disrespected by bringing in Johnny-come-lately Clintonistas to write the campaign in the final two months, and I actually think this is a hostile takeover. I think what this proves is that Clinton still runs the party. This is what John Kerry knows. John Kerry does not run this party because if the Clinton people go in there to take this campaign over it means Clinton is still running it. Kerry doesn’t work well with people, doesn’t engender a lot of loyalty and support the way he treats people. And I’m going to tell you, I would bet you that on the Marybeth Cahill, Tad “Perhaps a Tad Too” Devine side of the Kerry staff there’s a big demoralization. I’ll bet these people are dispirited. This is just not supposed to happen. They thought they had this big lead, and it never was genuine.
END TRANSCRIPT
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