RUSH: Here’s Miles O’Brien this morning on CNN.
O’BRIEN: Stories of the morning are coming up. We’ll check in on the campaign for president, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rush Limbaugh, although he’s not campaigning for president, all weighing in.
RUSH: Did you hear that? Listen to this again, folks. This just speaks for itself.
O’BRIEN: Stories of the morning are coming up. We’ll check in on the campaign for president, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rush Limbaugh, although he’s not campaigning for president, all weighing in.
RUSH: Now, how is it that I get mentioned in this roster when I am not running for anything, even though he mentioned that? I’m not a Democrat. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rush? Well, there’s an answer to these questions that I’m asking. Later, during the program, Miles O’Brien continued.
O’BRIEN: First, Democratic candidate John Edwards admits it might have been too soon for him to run for president in ’04. Edwards was serving his first and only Senate term when he declared himself a candidate four years ago. Now he says that he has the experience needed because he went through a presidential campaign. On the other side of the political spectrum, there’s Rush Limbaugh. (story) He told his listeners none of the current Republican candidates rev him up.
RUSH: (Laughing.) So that’s how I got thrown in the mix. What I actually said was nobody revs me up yet. Here’s the whole telephone call. By the way, I’ve seen this all over the place now. It’s not just on CNN, it’s in print, “Limbaugh not excited about any of these candidates.” That’s interpreted by the Drive-Bys as good news, if I’m not excited about any of them. They’re using that to tell themselves that the Republican stable is a bunch of duds and that they don’t have to worry about it. But here is the call that this ?not revved up about any of them? comment yet came from. It was on Monday, January 22nd.
RUSH ARCHIVE: To be honest with you, there’s nobody out there that revs me up, so why should I pretend that there is?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Not to say there won’t be.
CALLER: But I don’t think… I hate to see Brownback just disregarded because he’s a no-name right now. Talk about conservative values, you know? I mean he —
RUSH: Well, you know something. I have to tell you something. It’s going to be up to him to get noticed.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: It’s up to everybody in public life who wants to run for office to get noticed. You know, when I was a struggling young disc jockey when I was 17, 16, I would have loved if my radio station had gone out and bought a bunch of billboards and television advertisements telling my little town all about me, but it doesn’t work that way.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: It’s going to be up to these guys to get it, and it’s going to be a challenge for any Republican who’s not McCain or Giuliani or Mitt Romney because they’ve got the early media attention on this. But all it’s going to take is a couple wins, surprise wins in primaries. The whole thing can be upset.
RUSH: Now, the caller was asking me about Sam Brownback, ?Why aren’t you talking about Brownback? I mean, Brownback’s conservative. Why aren’t you mentioning Sam Brownback?? I said, ?Frankly, it slipped my mind that he was on the list.? Then I got, ?Well, you gotta get with it.? No, it’s not up to me to get noticed. It’s not up to me to pick these guys up and make sure everybody knows about them. It’s their job as candidates to get noticed. So I said nobody in the race on our side revs me up yet, and that becomes big news. Yeah, I did, I said too early, it’s meaningless right now, especially these polls. It’s not meaningless, but you can’t take a presidential poll right now, I don’t care whose it is and project who’s going to win the election a little under two years from now, just can’t do it.