RUSH: Well, well, well, the Associated Press, ladies and gentlemen. You know it’s bad when the Associated Press is honest and candid about the Democrats’ position as they struggle to do something with their majorities in Congress. Actually, there are two versions of this story. The first version was posted yesterday afternoon at 3:38. The second was posted at 4:27, about an hour later, and they do differ. The latest version buries the account of the Democrats “flailing.” Here’s the first story:
?Swept into power by voters clamoring for an end to the war in Iraq, Democrats have seen their efforts falter under a reality more complicated than they found on the campaign trail. While the public is fed up with Iraq, there is little consensus over what to do. Internal party divisions, Republican opposition and a president who – while weakened – still appears to have the dominant voice on the war?? Imagine that! The commander-in-chief, to the consternation of the Democrats and the Drive-By Media, still has the “dominant voice” in the war. These factors ?have all left Democrats flailing in search of a way to change the war’s course.? Now, if you read the second version of the story, the whole notion of the Democrats “flailing” has been removed. Here’s the second version, just one hour later, by the same writer: Julie Hirschfeld Davis. 
?Democratic leaders backed away from aggressive plans to limit President Bush’s war authority, the latest sign of divisions within their ranks over how to proceed. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday he wanted to delay votes on a measure that would repeal the 2002 war authorization and narrow the mission in Iraq. Senior Democrats who drafted the proposal, including Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Carl Levin of Michigan, had sought swift action on it as early as this week, when the Senate takes up a measure to enact the recommendations of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission. Reid, who will huddle with Democrats Tuesday to discuss whether to postpone the Iraq debate, cited pressure from victims’ families for quick action on the Sept. 11 bill as the reason for doing so.?
So we are to believe that the country is fed up with Iraq. The country wants us out. The Drive-Bys are running a poll today in the Washington Post that says 53% of the American people want a timetable to get out. The Democrats claim it was their mandate for the 2006 election, that they were elected to get us out of Iraq, because Bush wasn’t listening to the American people. Now all of a sudden we are to believe from the Associated Press that Dingy Harry is going to postpone the introduction of the rewrite of the 2002 war authorization, because families from the 9/11 experience want quick action on the bill that would adopt
Dingy Harry — predicting it would be days, not weeks, before the Senate returned to the issue — said, ?Iraq is going to be there. It’s just a question of when we get back to it.? I thought it was the priority! I thought it was the foremost authority and priority that the Democrats had. Why, this is what the American people want, we are told. ?The developments on both sides of the Capitol reflected a new level of disarray in Democratic ranks on Iraq. Swept into power by voters clamoring for an end to the war, Democrats have seen their efforts falter under a reality more complicated than they found on the campaign trail. While the public is fed up with Iraq, there is little consensus over what to do. Internal divisions, Republican opposition and a president who – while weakened – still appears to have the dominant voice on the war have all left Democrats flailing for a way to change the war’s course.? This is just too good. They’re laboring on a big misunderstanding, and that is that they were swept into power by voters clamoring for an end to the war.
They were not swept
Jim Manley, spokesman for Dingy Harry: ?The administration is increasingly isolated and they are increasingly at odds with where the American people are. ? We’re going to keep on going at it until the administration changes course.? Keep on? Keep on going? What does this tell you? I mean, what’s the bottom line here? The bottom line is — well, there are many bottom lines. One of the biggest bottom lines is the American people are not with them on this. If they were, they would de-fund the war. Number two: there is not unity in the Democrat caucus. There are some Democrats, when they got wind of what Murtha’s “slow bleed” plan was and what it entailed, backtracked as fast as they could and wanted no part of it. Even some Democrats know that the American people are not going to support securing defeat for the troops by denying them reinforcements and making sure they don’t get the latest equipment, this sort of thing, everything in Murtha’s plan. The American people don’t support this. That’s the bottom line.
Some Democrats are beginning to rethink this whole business of owning defeat. Make no mistake. There’s been some impact within selected circles, little areas of the Democrat Party both in the House and Senate over the concept that they do own defeat. There are some Democrats, a precious few but enough to gum up the works, who don’t want to own defeat. So there are all kinds of roadblocks now in the way. The Politico website today: ?Pelosi Falls Short on Election Promises.? This is a story about how most of the promises she made have nowhere near been enacted. They’ve had one five-day work week. This work week is going to be three days. She’s drawing fire for putting Congressman William Jefferson (Democrat-Louisiana), who had 90 grand in cold cash in his freezer, on the Homeland Security Committee. Basically, the Democrats are flailing. They are unable to accomplish what they claim their mandate entitles them to do.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Henry in Brownsville, Texas, we’ll start with you, sir. Nice to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: First of all, I want to say that commercial you ran earlier was a hoot, and as common ground, I did vote for Bush in ’00, in 2000, but I can’t believe that you’re surprised that the Dems won in ’06. I’m surprised that they didn’t sweep things in ’04, given the way that the war was just such a strategic blunder. It was quite clear by then. It’s been so poorly tactically executed that it’s just amazing me. It’s a monument to the genius of Karl Rove, who was able to use scare tactics to keep everybody with this “don’t change a horse in midstream,” although it’s lame —
RUSH: You can’t believe I’m surprised that the Democrats won?
CALLER: Yeah, in ’06. I’m surprised they didn’t win in ’04. The American public was a little… Karl Rove was a genius. I don’t care what any detractors say nowadays. That man is a genius.
RUSH: Well, look, I’m not going to debate the IQ of Karl Rove because I don’t really know what it is.
CALLER: Well, it’s higher than everyone else’s.
RUSH: You people on the left are a little paranoid at Karl Rove. Karl Rove was responsible for all the conspiracies that embarrassed Kerry and got you guys in a little bit of trouble. Let me explain to you why I was surprised. I’ll go through this again. The reason I was surprised is because people have to vote for Democrats, too, in elections. People were asking me all year, Henry, “Are Republicans going to hold the House?”
I said, ?I have no doubt they’re going to hold the House.?
They said, “Why?” because they were scared to death. They see the media every day ripping Republicans a new one.
I said, ?What in the world are the Democrats doing that’s inspirational? What are they doing that’s motivational? Name one thing for me the Democrats are saying that’s going to build a movement. Name one thing.”
There’s nothing inspirational about the Democrat Party message, not then, not now. There’s nothing motivational. There’s nothing that is causing a massive movement of voters to the Democrat Party, because it’s filled with irrational rage, irrational hatred. Those kind of things appeal to the base of people that are already there. It?s sort of like preaching to the choir and throwing some of the red meat that they need every day to stay fired up, but it doesn’t attract new people, and it didn’t attract new people in the 2006 elections. What happened was the Republicans blew it. The Republicans, for a whole host of reasons, which I don’t want to rehash. (sighing) I just don’t want to reiterate these things because it’s an old subject. But the bottom line is they gave nobody a reason to vote for them. They got lazy. In fact, I have a theory, a further theory. I think what happens — and this is one of the reasons why I’m not saying a whole lot about the presidential candidates. I’m going to be right up front with you here. I think one of the problems that the Republicans had in the last election cycle was that they didn’t say anything. They were relying on people like me and others in the alternative media to state their case and to take on their enemies.
They’re relying on us to beat up the Democrats while they sat around and didn’t have the guts to say who they were and what they believed in, and what they thought of what the Democrats were going to do. They’re the ones that get the votes, not us. So, I think they got a little lazy. Some of them. Not all of them, but some of them did. Then they got floored by the Foley business. That made ’em scared to death because they’re in Washington, and that was a big deal. If anything, Henry, it was the leak of the Foley scandal that did the Republicans in, as much as their unwillingness to do anything about it, stand up and be proactive and aggressive. Democrats didn’t win diddly-squat, and the proof of it, Henry, is that they didn’t campaign on anything, Henry. They didn’t have anything. All they were doing was running down Bush and running down the war, and running down Bush, and running down Bush, and running down Bush. They didn’t have any plans. They specifically,
Then after they won the election they were out there claiming a mandate, and the mandate is to get us out of Iraq, and now they’re even chickening out of doing that, Henry. You need to look at your own side here if you want to find where the problems exist. Your side owns defeat, and the American people don’t want any part of it. Had your Democrats been campaigning last fall saying the things that they have been saying since they assumed power in Washington, they would have lost in a landslide, and they knew it. Had they been out trying to secure the defeat of the US military; had they been promising not to send reinforcements; had they been promising not to send new equipment; had they been telling people what they were going to try to do was rewrite the authorization for the use of force that was signed in 2002 that Democrats demanded; had they said any of that they would have lost in a landslide because the American people don’t want to lose a war anywhere, Henry. They don’t want to lose, even if it has been mismanaged up to now in various aspects.
War is war, and things change, and they don’t want to lose, and they don’t want money taken away from US soldiers on the battlefield. The American people here do not own defeat. They’re not invested in it. The Democrat Party is, and they didn’t have the guts to tell the American people that this is what their plan was prior to that last election. A lot of people misreading the reasons for those results, particularly the Democrats. If there was a mandate to get out of Iraq they wouldn’t be messing around with all these nonbinding resolutions, Henry. They would have already put forward a bill to de-fund the war. They don’t have the guts to do it.