RUSH: Let’s join Barbara Boxer on the floor of the Senate debating her issue.
BOXER: — predominantly in African-American communities. Why did in the Columbus area alone an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 voters leave polling places out of frustration without having voted? How many more never bothered to vote after they heard this because they had to take care of their families or they had a job, or they were sick or their legs ached after waiting for hours.
RUSH: Or they had to go get their food stamps.
BOXER: Why is it when 638 people voted at a precinct in Franklin County —
BOXER: –awarded 4,258 extra votes to George Bush?
RUSH: Or join an environmental protest.
BOXER: Only 628 people had shown up. But George Bush got more than 4,000 votes. How could that happen?
RUSH: It’s been explained.
BOXER: — Franklin County —
RUSH: — and corrected.
BOXER: — reduced the number of electronic voting machines in downtown precincts while adding them into the suburbs. This all led to long lines. In Cleveland where there were thousands of —
RUSH: I’m gonna tell you what’s going on here, folks, when this is over.
BOXER: — why, when everyone knew that poll workers had given faulty instructions to the voters. Because of this, and voting irregularities in so many other places, I join today with congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a ten-year judge and an eight-year prosecutor, a six-year member of Congress, a woman inducted into the women’s Hall of Fame, folks, she has great credibility. And she asked just one senator to take a couple of hours. I hate inconveniencing my friends, but I think it’s worth a couple of hours to shine some light on these issues. Here’s the thing. We passed HAVA. That was important, the Help America Vote Act. But then we did nothing. Senators Graham, Clinton, and I introduced a bill to ensure a paper trail goes along with electronic voting. We couldn’t even get a hearing in that last Congress.
RUSH: Federal judges rejected it here in Florida. Somebody censure this woman.
BOXER: So let me simply say to my colleagues, I have great respect for all of you.
RUSH: Oh, BS.
BOXER: But I think it’s key that whether we’re Republicans or Democrats, we understand that the centerpiece, the centerpiece of this country is democracy, and the centerpiece of democracy —
RUSH: Is when liberals run it.
BOXER: — the right to vote, and I ask you, my friends, from both sides of the aisle, when we get busy working in the next few weeks —
RUSH: Yes.
BOXER: — let us not turn away from the things that happened in Ohio. Our people are dying —
RUSH: We’re going to move forward, Ms. Boxer. You can look backward all you want.
BOXER: For what reason? To bring democracy to the far corners of the world.
RUSH: To bring liberalism to the far corners of the world.
BOXER: — and let’s do it —
RUSH: Socialism is what you mean.
BOXER: Thank you very much, Mr. President [of the Senate].
VOICE: Your time has expired.
RUSH: That’s as much as I can handle, ladies and gentlemen. Now, let this be a lesson, by the way. I want you people to hear me out on this — and Republicans, any elected official Republicans listening or will hear about this, please hear me out on this. I want this whole charade today of what the Democrats have pulled in the electoral certification to be a lesson to all the Republicans in Congress and all of the conservatives in the punditry field who worry that the Republicans might rue the day if they end the filibuster for judges. You know, the Republicans have this nuclear option that would end the filibuster when it comes to judicial confirmations. There’s no requirement for a supermajority to confirm judges. The Democrats have insisted on it since — well, last two years, last three years, of Bush’s term, first term, and everybody is running around scared. “We can’t do the nuclear option!” We will rue the day. Why, we will really make the Democrats… You cannot appease them. You can’t appease them. You can’t get along with them. They’re not interested in it. I’ve been saying this for 16 years!
The Democrats cannot be reasoned with. It’s time for the Republicans to act like they are the majority and beat these people back. It would have been great to see her censured today along with Stephanie Tubbs whatever from Ohio who was making a similar speech at the same time in the House of Representatives. And by beating these people back, you’ll
We are being portrayed as the true enemy because we are not behaving up to our normal standards ourselves by engaging in “torture” that hasn’t even been defined. These are the same people who opposed the Patriot Act, who support liberal judges, who voted against the defense budget, who have hindered the CIA, who oppose coordination between the FBI and the CIA, who oppose long detentions of terrorist prisoners, now they oppose aggressive interrogation short of torture. They even oppose that. We’re not even talking about torture when you get right down to it. We’re talking about people who oppose detainment and severe questioning to find out what they know, and as I said earlier, this stuff is all over television, all over the world. Just who do you think is rubbing their hands together going, “Wow, do we own this?” I guarantee you Al-Jazeera is loving every minute of this, and so is its audience. It would be one thing if we had committed criminal acts. It would be one thing if we had engaged in all of this, but we have not. This is not about Abu Ghraib.
As to this business of Ohio here and what is gone on today, as I listen to the litany that was announced by Barbara Boxer — and if you didn’t get to hear it all, she also said the same thing at a press conference this morning, and we have at audio of that. You know where I’ve heard it all? You know where I’ve seen it all? At these kook left-wing Democrat websites, Democrat Underground, you name it, MoveOn.org, all of these places, Michael Moore-type places. That’s where this litany of complaints about what happened in Ohio comes from. Now, here is what’s happening. The Democrats know they’re in electoral mess and they know they’re sinking when it comes to their electoral chances, 2006, 2008. As you well know, it’s an axiom of politics, you can’t do anything until you secure your base. That is what this is all about. There’s a reason Barbara Boxer signed onto this. She was just reelected. She is just starting a new six-year term. This will not come back to haunt her, probably wouldn’t anyway, being that she’s in San Francisco, but it wouldn’t haunt her at the ballot box, and she may not run again anyway. This may be her last term. It’s not a coincidence that Barbara Boxer is the senator that signed on to do this, because she has insulation. She has protection. She has cover.
This is all about the Democrats securing their base. What you heard Barbara Boxer say, I’ll lay you ten-to-one — we’ll never know this — I’ll lay you ten-to-one the Democrats are wringing their hands over whether to do this or not, because the smart ones — and there are some, still have to be, law of averages — have to know how stupid this is; they have to know what a pile of excrement they’ve stepped in with this. But they faced really little choice, because their base is demanding this, their base has been demanding this since November 3rd. The base has not stopped talking about this since November 3rd. This is all that’s animated the kook fringe mainstream of the Democratic Party, and these people are having to respond to it. These people are having to give voice to it on the floor of the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. They live and breathe in a conspiracy theory because of their kook base. This is a greatly illustration of just how low they’ve sunk, a great illustration of the trouble they’re in, and they know it. They look like utter fools today, spoilsports, sore losers, contradictory.
Four years ago, they hated the Electoral College and they wanted to get rid of it. Only the popular vote should count. Four years later, they hate the popular vote and they want the Electoral College to count; they don’t care if they can turn around these 118,000 votes and win that way, they would do it, even though that’s what they claimed was wrong with the 2000 election. So there’s no consistency from them. There’s no rudder. There’s nobody guiding them other than their kook base, which is expanding and growing. I think one of the greatest illustrations of the problem they’re having is they can’t find a party chairman that they like. Further, beyond that, they think the party chairman is somebody that’s going to help them actually win elections. Aside from raising money, the party chairman doesn’t identify the party. The presidential candidate does. So now they’re having to go back to Terry McAuliffe who hasn’t won diddly-squat as party chairman. He’s taken them down along with everybody else to a road they haven’t been in since the 1920s in terms of being out of power, and that road has no end in sight, and they’re on that road, and it’s a one-way street the way they’re operating now.
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