Then you go to California 50 and Brian Bilbray, 50-45%, over Francine Busby. Busby can’t get above 45% no matter what happens in that race. As I predicted to you, ladies and gentlemen, when the last polls came out that showed that they were basically tied but then he had moved up two points, I said, “It’s going to be bigger than that,” and that the Democrats are going to proclaim this a moral victory, and the reason why — I didn’t predict that because I was just reporting that — some guy that works at The Hotline, which is an inside-the-Beltway tip sheet, had pretty much some weeks ago said, “This is going to be a big moral victory even if Busby loses.”
Here’s just a sample. I mean, you can find this on any Democrat kook blog that you go to today. But here’s just a sample. What is the blogger? “My Direct Democracy,” I guess it’s called. “No matter what the media says, no Democrat should be mistaken about this result. First, this is a huge seismic shift in our favor that bodes extremely well for November. If we receive an 18% shift nationwide, we will win the House easily. If Republican candidates are pulling only 20% of the independent vote the Indecrat [sic] realignment is still on.” So the Democrats are indeed portraying this as a “moral victory,” ladies and gentlemen, even though Francine Busby loses by four-and-a-half to five points. Let’s look at the circumstances surrounding this victory by Bilbray.
Bush’s approval numbers are in the thirties — and do you remember the generic congressional ballot that the Democrats always cite in polls taken by the Drive-By Media? They say that the generic congressional ballot, meaning, “Are you going to vote Democrat or are you going to vote Republican in your next congressional election?” They don’t mention any names in a generic ballot. All those generic ballots give the Democrats, you know, ten-, 11-point, 12-point margins of victory — and yet when the real votes are counted outside of polls, it just doesn’t seem to matter. Now, the Democrats are out there running on this culture-of-corruption strategery and some might say, “Well, they’ve kind of gone soft on that because of the Congressman William Jefferson (Democrat-Louisiana) fiasco.”
Yeah, but they didn’t go soft on it out in California 50. It was a major impetus of Francine Busby’s campaign trying to refer to Bilbray as a lobbyist, and just trying to taint him as a Tom DeLay type. Let’s not forget the guy whose seat this used to be is in jail, or is going to soon be in jail! You can’t get a better example of the “culture of corruption” than that, and it still didn’t portray the Democrats to victory. Now, here’s Bilbray himself last night after the election has pretty much been determined to be his. He had this to say about why he thinks he was victorious.
RUSH: All right, what he thinks — what he’s saying there is — basically you stick with the president on what you can, and you stand up for what you believe in when it comes to immigration. Now, the previous notion — and I mentioned the site for the Hotline guy, John Mercurio — in the Hotline had said earlier that 48% for Francine Busby would still count as a win for Democrats, and as we know she’s around 45% — which is the same thing she got in the primary, by the way. She did not gain any ground from the primary to this election, and 45%? Don’t let anybody tell you that this is a huge shift. They’re all citing, “Well, Bush carried this district by 54% back in 2004.”
Well, the most important number is to look how Democrats do in this district traditionally, and in the 50th district of California, getting 45% of the vote in a congressional race is pretty much what the Democrats always manage to pull off. There was also another candidate on the ballot, really anti-immigration, made it the central theme of his campaign. He got like, what, 4.7% of the vote. If you add that to Bilbray’s total, you see same thing that happened in the primary: all the Republican candidates split the vote. That’s why Busby got the lion’s share of the vote in the primary when the Democrats were just as excited as they could be. Nevertheless, it’s another dis… I don’t care how the Democrats are spinning this publicly; I don’t care how their kook fringe bloggers are spinning it.
This is not something they were hoping for, and if they want to continue to have “moral victories” like this all over the place, we should grant them. Now, what of the Republican side of this? There’s one thing to keep in mind. This election is going to take place again in November, folks. This is just a special election to fill Duke Cunningham’s seat, and it’ll probably be Busby again. They probably will run the Democrat that has not been able to win. She never won against Cunningham, obviously; never even got close, and they’ll probably run her again, and you’re hearing from a lot of people outside if you’re paying attention, “Well, Republicans ought not take this too much for granted! There’s still storm clouds out there on the horizon. There’s still some problems.”
I understand not wanting to beat your chest and gloat and that sort of thing, but there are lessons here for Republicans to learn, as well as lessons for Democrats to learn. But the one thing we’re confident of is the Democrats will not learn the lesson they need to learn from this, and that is: Liberalism isn’t going to win in a district like this and they’re not going to be able to succeed in this culture-of-corruption business. For the Republicans, the thing about it, folks, is this. Republicans are where the party of ideas is and people want ideology in their elections and they want ideas and they want principles and so forth, at least on the Republican side.
It has been this way for many years now. There’s no mystery here. So there is definitely an upside here for the Republicans, and if they want to tell themselves, “Well, we shouldn’t be too excited about this. Well, you know, we still got problems. Well, we still could lose the House of Representatives.” I understand the desire to temper it all and, as I say, not gloat, but make no mistake about it: the Democrats targeted this seat just like had targeted the seat that Paul Hackett lost in Ohio, and this was going to confirm for them that the path that they’re following here on this “culture of corruption” and everything else is a winner for them. To the extent that they think it is, you know, hallelujah!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: (Bumper music: Heart) In other election news in California: “California voters appeared to have rejected,” well they have rejected, “ballot measures to authorize the state to sell $600 million in bonds for libraries.” That would be “liberries” for those of you in Rio Linda, and of course the Meathead’s Proposition, Prop 82, that was a landslide lot. That was a 60-40 loss for the Meathead. Here’s what the Meathead had to say last night in California after his Prop 82 went down to a landslide defeat:
“All year, these are the real leaders of this state who put their heart and soul into this campaign, so they saw that every child got what they needed, and they’re not going away, and I’m not going away,” said the Meathead. “Right now it doesn’t look good but it doesn’t matter. Win or lose, we have raised the profile of the importance of early childhood education and preschool in this state and it will never go away.” I don’t think, Meathead, you need to raise any consciousness to education at any level. It is one of the things that most parents are concerned about. The Meathead here, another Democrat, declaring winning doesn’t matter.
“Win or lose, we did good.”
So it’s not good news for Democrats no matter where they look. Most of these elections yesterday did not insert officeholders, these were just primaries, but California 50 did actually elect somebody that will serve, and that’s Brian Bilbray. All right, let’s try the audio sound bites again. We want to do a comparison, side by side. Bob Schieffer, last night on the CBS Evening News, a portion of his report on the election for California 50.
SCHIEFFER: Democrats believe they have a chance to take back control of Congress from the Republicans this year and they’re looking to a special election tonight for a sign that they may be right. It is an election in the 50th congressional district in southern California to fill the remaining seven months of Duke Cunningham’s term.
RUSH: Yes. So the point here is: “They’re looking to a special election for a sign that they may be right.” So how did Schieffer cover the results? Well, he appeared this morning on the Early Show on CBS. Hannah Storm talking to him says, “Democrats were hoping to get that seat. That district’s been described as ‘ruby red,’ but they came pretty close. What do you make of the election?
SCHIEFFER: I think it just shows that there’s a lot of turmoil out there. (clears throat) No the Democrats didn’t win, but I mean in that particular district it would be, uh, i-i-if a Democrat got elected it would be like George Wallace winning a seat in Harlem.
RUSH: Oh come on! Wait a second! Stop the tape a second. It was never portrayed that way. You guys thought you had a full-fledged chance. You were racing to victory. This was going to happen. You had a couple people out there saying it would be a moral victory if you lost, but come on, Bob! This is the way you reported on your flash poll after a Bush speech by telling everybody basically your poll was worthless because it mostly sampled Republicans but yet you reported it anyway after you tried to discredit your own poll. It was never portrayed as like “George Wallace winning a seat in Harlem.” You guys in the Democratic Party were salivating. You were panting. (panting) This was in the palm of your hand. He said, “There are probably more American eagles just off the Endangered Species List than there are Democrats in that district.” Here’s the rest of the bite.
SCHIEFFER: — American eagles just off the Endangered Species List than there are Democrats in that district, but I think it is still a warning shot for Republicans. This has to be a sign to Republicans that they might lose the House, I think.
RUSH: Okay. (sigh) How’s that? How would the Republicans possibly look at this and see that it is a sign they could lose the House? What is…? I know that there’s some. Look, in the Republican Party we’ve got our own fatalists. We have our own pessimists and they’ll come up with statistics. “Yeah, if he doesn’t win this by 55 there’s been a switch out there. This has been a big problem for us and so forth.” Fine. If it keeps you tuned in and working on repairing damage, you know, all well and good. But what is the indication here just as what was the indication in Ohio, that the results here showing a Republican victory would tend to make the Republicans nervous and convince them they might lose the House? This again is the Drive-By Media reporting what they hoped would be the case, and when it didn’t turn out they still reported as though, “Well, still could be, though, because this is not very good. There’s a lot of turmoil out there.” There’s a lot of turmoil everywhere! He also says that there aren’t that many Democrats out there. Democrats get 45% of the vote in this district — just 40, 45 — traditionally. It was not that unusual a turnout for Democrats in this district.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One more audio sound bite here. This is from CNN this morning and their American Morning show. Miles O’Brien talking to the senior political correspondent, Candy Crowley. O’Brien says, “This is a heavily Republican district. Cunningham, when he was doing well, would get 58% numbers. Are the Democrats going to be able to spin this one into some sort of win?”
O’BRIEN: Yes.
CROWLEY: I think we’ll hear a lot about immigration, too, because, uhhh, one of the reasons that the Democrat may have lost, uh, is some sort of intemperate remark she had to say that made her look as though she was asking illegals to come vote for her. So, uh…
RUSH: She was. She was, Candy.
CROWLEY: There was a lot going on in that race which made me sort of, uh, to begin with, think I’m not sure what kind of bellwether it is because we can see a lot, uh, in it that may or may not, uh, have national implications.
O’BRIEN: A W is a W, I guess.
RUSH: Damn it! “A W is a W I guess, damn it,” he wanted to say. So now it’s it is not even a bellwether, folks. He was the canary in the coal mine, but Bilbray was, but now it’s not even a bellwether. It’s just, “Well, these elections, there’s so much going on out there. You know, we really can’t read too much into this.” I’m going to just tell you this, folks. If Francine Busby had won this race, all we would have been hearing about all summer is this race and how it portends the doom of the Republicans and their control of the House. Now this race, this victory, is going to be swept under the rug, typical Drive-By Media illustration here. They get everybody all worked up; they throw a bunch of bombs into the crowd getting them all excited about this. It doesn’t come out the way they all hope and the way they predict. “Ah, okay. Time to move on.” Back in the convertible, head down the highway, find another group of people to lob a bunch of bombs and mortar fire in to get them all agitated. That of course will be Haditha. Every stop that the Drive-By Media engages in will be Haditha.
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