RUSH: This is so, so funny. The Democrats are afraid of Fox News. Actually, I think there’s something major at work here, and I think it goes back to Bill Clinton’s appearance with Chris Wallace. I am of the suspicion that this whole thing with Fox was planned. The Democrats pulling out of the debate in August in Nevada with Fox News, right now everybody is blaming the kook fringe, these bloggers, the MoveOn.orgs and so forth. One thing you have to understand is that something like this could not happen without Rahm Emanuel and John Podesta involved. When I mentioned this to people over the weekend, they said, “Well, this is the blogs.”
I said, “No, it’s all one machine, folks. Soros, Emanuel, the whole Democrat machine is one thing. It’s a distinction without a difference to say, ‘No, the bloggers pulled them out of this.’”
I disagree totally. I think this is an absolute disaster for these people. Whether it makes ’em look like they’re on the leash of the ‘netroot’ bloggers, the kook fringe or not, it’s just silly. Here they are afraid of Fox News. They’re afraid of Fox News moderators. Now, when that charge got out, they said, “No, no, no, no! We’re not afraid of Fox. What we’re afraid of is legitimizing Fox. We don’t want to legitimize Fox as a news source.” But stop and think what’s happened here. Here are people running for the presidency. You are president of all the people if you get elected. Fox News has more viewers than any other cable network. Of course the original statement from Dingy Harry was how excited he was that Fox News was going to be partnering with the Democrat state organization of Nevada to bring Democrat views, perhaps, to a different audience.
Then, of course, the Breck Girl — ‘I am Woman’ — decides to pull out in what was clearly a fund-raising move with the netroot blog fringe out there on the Democrat side. Then Bill Richardson followed suit, and then the whole thing of blaming Roger Ailes’ joke. We have the sound bite. I’ll save it for you later. Ailes was making a speech during a First Amendment award he was given at the Radio/TV News Directors Association. He was given the First Amendment award, made a joke, and the Democrats say, “Oh, no, we can’t put up with that! Why, we’re not going to have somebody who thinks that questioning our Democrat candidates.” It was a joke aimed at President Bush that involved Barack Obama’s name. I think what Ailes said was that Bush called the President Musharraf of Pakistan and said, “This Barack Obama guy is all over the place. Why can’t we capture this guy?” That’s a joke aimed at the stupidity of Bush. It’s not an Obama joke in the sense that his name is similar to Osama bin Laden.
Anyway, this is not going to stand ’em in good stead. What’s happened now is the whole debate has been canceled and they’ve been asking CNN and MSNBC if they want to pick it up and do the debate in August. So far, nobody has. Somebody probably will. But if they don’t, the Democrats have just made sure that nobody’s going to hear their candidates across country, at least in this debate. The Republicans, unrelated to this, pulled out of a CNN debate in New Hampshire in April. This was just scheduling conflicts. Not enough of the front-runners could get there. So it really has nothing to do with CNN’s bias. I wish it did. Can you imagine if Republican candidates refused to go on a debate sponsored by CNN or PMSNBC or any of the networks on the same pretext?
“Well, we can’t get a fair shot. These are liberal networks.”
It’s just silly. This is not going to make the Democrats look good. Here they are acting afraid of Fox News. They’re afraid to legitimize Fox News, but they want to legitimize Iran all over the place by having us talk to the Iranians. They want to legitimize Al-Qaeda. They want to legitimize all of our genuine, real enemies by forcing negotiations, capitulations, and defeat, but they’re not going to ‘legitimize’ Fox News. These people are Stalinists, folks. They are not going to tolerate anything that dissents from their views. It’s out there and it’s wide open for everybody to see.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Roger Ailes on Thursday night in Washington at the Radio and Television News Directors Association Foundation event, was given the First Amendment Award. So he gets up there and he says, “Some people told me to do some news anchoring here before I get to my remarks,” so he went into a little riff of news anchoring with jokes, and said this.
AILES: It is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don’t know if it’s true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, “Why can’t we catch this guy?”
RUSH: And of course the Democrats screamed, “Oh my gosh! He’s telling an Osama Obama joke!’ He wasn’t. That joke is clearly a joke that impugns President Bush. Gail Shister was on Reliable Sources (she’s a Philadelphia TV news writer) with Howard Kurtz yesterday on CNN, and this was what she said.
SHISTER: It’s childish. I think it’s high school the thing about making fun of his name. I think it’s ironic that he made the remarks when he was getting an award for the First Amendment. And I also think that you could make the — Democrats could make the argument that, well, what if we called ‘Adolph Giuliani’? Names matter. Words are important.
RUSH: Uh, well, I don’t know. She calls Ailes’ joke childish. If a liberal would have made the joke with Bush at the Oscars it would have been hilarious, but everybody is missing the point. To give you an idea just how tightly wound these people are on the left, they just thought that was an Obama joke. By the way, speaking of Obama, Al Sharpton is on the warpath. He is jealous big time of Obama and essentially is saying Obama is not down for the struggle. Sharpton is jealous. This is a New York Post story today that Sharpton is being sort of replaced by Obama as the Democrats’ star power of the African-American race. We have details on that coming up. They asked Obama how he felt about Ailes’ joke.
OBAMA: I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t take huge offense to the joke that Roger Ailes made. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.
RUSH: Yeah. The joke was about Bush! Of all the people, Dennis Kucinich is the only Democrat presidential candidate to rip the decision of the Nevada Democratic Party and Dingy Harry to pull out of the Fox debate in August. He said that it ‘smacks of manipulation by run-and-hide candidates.’ Kucinich’s theory is that a bunch of Democrat presidential candidates don’t want to get hard questions from anybody who would be on a Fox panel with their war vote. That’s not it. They’re afraid, folks. They are patently afraid of Fox News, and they’re afraid of what will happen on Fox News. This only happens when you don’t have the confidence to take tough questions, and it illustrates more than ever that Democrats are totally comfortable dealing with their own allies and buddies in the Drive-By Media, but true, tough and hard questions they don’t want any part of because they are afraid.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The American Spectator today on their website in the Prowler column. “Nevada State Democrat Party chairman Tom Collins had already made the decision to pull out of the Fox News co-sponsored presidential debate to be held in his state in August. Late Friday, Collins and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, released a letter — via MoveOn.org — announcing that the state party was insulted by remarks made by News Corp executive Roger Ailes. … According to sources inside CNN and MSNBC, officials of the state party made calls to both networks on Monday, March 5, inquiring if there was interest on the part of either cable network to be involved in the debate should ‘negotiations’ with Fox News break down.”
According to the Prowler, they had already made the decision to get out of the Fox debate, the Fox deal that had been made. Of course, Dingy Harry — back when the deal was announced — was all excited, (paraphrasing) “Oh, this is cool. It’s an opportunity to bring a large audience, legitimize the Nevada state Democratic Party.” They moved their primary up. Nevada has moved their primary up. It’s much earlier, and Dingy Harry was looking forward to it. Then somebody heard from somebody — and again, I want to stress here, folks, that everybody is pointing fingers at MoveOn.org and the kook fringe bloggers. But something like this cannot happen without Rahm Emanuel and John Podesta of the Democrat think-tank being involved in it. Think what you want. MoveOn.org may indeed have the ability to sway candidates like the Breck Girl, and force his pulling out. He was the first announced candidate to pull out. That was all about fund-raising and showing he’s tough and emphasizing his anti-war stance. At primary time, these are the people that you have to go to, to secure, if you want to make any inroads against the front-runners, Barack Obama and Mrs. Bill Clinton.
But make no mistake, there’s no distinction here when you start talking about MoveOn.org and John Podesta. Who do you think put these things together: Podesta, former Clinton chief of staff with his think-tank and George Soros and all these left-wing websites. It’s all one machine, folks. The Democrat Party is just one machine. The idea the Democrats are scared of this bunch and worried about this bunch and the idea that the Democrats in Washington being led around by these people in the blogs, it’s PR. It’s a huge machine. I’m going to tell you, this machine is in the process of making one of the largest power grabs, politically, in our nation’s history — which is fine. That’s what politics is all about. If they win in 2008, I’m warning you, you have no idea just how far left this party wants to take this country. You’ve heard people say that this is not the Democrat Party of JFK, even of LBJ. There’s a new term for that strain of the party, interestingly enough.
They’re being called neolibs.
The party today is an entirely different group of people. It’s full-fledged, 100% pure leftists: radical socialist leftists who have at the top of their agenda, a resentment for this country as it’s currently constituted. Its institutions that define it and make it great, those are going to be under assault if these people win in 2008. So don’t fall for the notion here that this is the blogs doing this and the Democratic Party has no fingerprints on it, because they are one and the same. It’s the same machine. Now, at this radio/TV news director dinner where Roger Ailes got the First Amendment award, a number of reporters from the AP and Reuters who were present at the event used a standing ovation to sneak out of the ballroom before Ailes spoke. One of the reporters said, “He’s not a journalist, and I’m not going to waste my time. I need to find a drink anyway.”
What does this mean?
These people don’t want to even expose themselves to alternative points of views, and this is what is Stalinist about it. Not only do they not want to expose themselves, they want to shut them down. They want to silence anybody. But what does it say when an entire political party — and again, this is not the Nevada Democrats alone, and it’s not MoveOn.org. This is the Democrat Party of Rahm Emanuel, John Podesta and Dingy Harry. They are all made this happen. I can’t prove this, obviously, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to learn down the road that they accepted this deal to have Fox televise their debate in August knowing full well that they were going to do just what they did on Friday and pull out of it.
They are trying to delegitimize Fox in the mainstream. They’re trying to paint it as something that’s not even journalism. It’s beneath them to appear on the Fox News Channel, even though they have, even though Fox is boiling over with leftist commentators and analysts — and even though John Edwards, the Breck Girl has appeared on Fox something like 33 times. That’s what makes me think that this is all part of a grand strategery that was sprung with the appearance of Bill Clinton on Fox News Sunday in which he took the occasion to just bash Fox, bash Wallace as illegitimate and just trying to do a hit piece; just trying to satisfy conservatives and right-wingers.
I will lay you ten to one that this whole thing was orchestrated from the beginning: accept the deal and then pull out of it, make it look like the blogs did it, and therefore you empower the blogs. I saw a graph over the weekend of the website hits that these left-wing blogs get. I wish I could remember the numbers on this chart. They were expressed as a percentage of users, and I don’t recall them. It was for every day last week. Way up at the top of the chart was the Drudge Report. Barely registering was MoveOn.org; barely registering was the Daily Kos; barely registering were all these left-wing blogs, the Huffington Post — barely in terms of hits by Internet users. The Drudge Report just skyrocketed. Now, granted, Drudge is very high. These hits could be, for these left-wing blogs, I guess somewhat significant. MoveOn.org is claiming 650,000 members. They have 650,000 members. The way hits can mount up on a website, they ought to be a lot higher than they were on this chart. So don’t think this was the blogs. The blogs didn’t drive this.
The blogs’ only big candidate lost last November, that would be Ned Lamont. This is the Democrat Party. I hate to be redundant here, but I just have a feeling that this whole thing was planned from the get-go and it’s going to be more of the same. Now, how do Democrats go on Fox after this? There are plenty of left-wing commentators on Fox. You have Susan Estrich and Martin Frost. They’re all over the place. What do they do now? (interruption) Yeah, but she’s a guest. Dingell’s wife is on, but they never identify her as Dingell’s wife. She’s up there Chyroned ‘Debbie Dingell, Democrat Activist.’ They never identify her as John Dingell’s wife. She’s on there as a guest, but the point is they have liberal guests. They’re all over the place. They have liberal generals analyzing the war. It’s all over the place. What are these Democrats going to do now? If Fox is certainly not suited for Democrat candidates to try to sell their ideas, my gosh, isn’t that where you want to do it? Are you afraid of your own ideas? Do you not have confidence in your own ideas that you can’t go on a cable network that you think is leaning to the right? What are you afraid of?
This is a giant effort to delegitimize Fox with the mainstream. Here’s another interesting question about this. You have PMSNBC. You have CNN. You have ABC, NBC, CBS. I haven’t seen anything yet on their reactions to this, but I wonder what they are. I wonder what they will be. (interruption) You’ve seen something? CNN was going nuts for celebration? (interruption) Okay, maybe that proves my point. CNN was ‘outfoxed,’ meaning Fox stupidly made a deal that they should have known the Democrats were never going to keep. Okay, so here’s CNN, who’s barely viewable in the ratings and MSNBC even less so. They’re in the same business, and a cable news network has just been dissed by a political party. Now, most of the journalists circle the wagons. They’ll circle the wagons around Dan Rather when he forges documents. They’ll circle the wagons around each other. But when it comes to Fox, they get ostracized.
So even the fraternity of journalists has its limits when Fox is involved. This is going to come back to haunt them all in due course. The American people are not stupid. The American people have made Fox the largest watched and viewed cable news network. These other guys are sitting there, and they’re sucking their air. (Keep it clean.) They think this is going to hurt Fox. I’m going to tell you something else. I happen to know Roger Ailes, and this kind of move does not send Ailes cowering to the corner with his tail tucked between his legs. It’s just the opposite. Roger Ailes doesn’t believe in defense. It’s going to be fascinating to watch all of this unfold.
RUSH: To Pittsburgh and Sandy. You’re up first today. Nice to have you on the program.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. You’re number one in this household for many generations. The Democratic candidates did debate on Fox during their primaries in 2004, so what’s the difference now? It seems to me that the party has moved even further to the left because they were willing to do it back then, and now, you know, the far left is really in control of the Democrat Party.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Don’t tell me moderate Democrats. You’ve gotta go to South Carolina to get conservatives. There are conservative Democrats. There aren’t any moderate Democrats. There are leftists. There are ‘neoliberals,’ and there are socialists. The distinctions between those three are too tiny to notice. What you have here is a party that the rooted in fear, a party that knows it does not have a mainstream message and cannot stand for alternative or opposing points of view to have prominence, to have influence, and to have an audience — which is why they’re talking about reenacting the Fairness Doctrine to silence programs like this, which is why they’re trying to marginalize Fox. If they were confident, Sandy, of their ideas, they would be eager to take those ideas to any and everybody in whatever forum.
CALLER: Oh, absolutely, Rush. I see the Stalinist actions here in Pennsylvania. They cut out the Green Party. They file lawsuits against anybody that runs on any other party, just because they don’t want to undercut their own position with their voters.
RUSH: Precisely.
CALLER: You can see it time and time again. When Clinton did what he did on Fox, he really wanted to put Fox on the defensive, too, so that the guys that were asking the questions would feel they have to bend over backwards to give the Democratic point of view. So I think that that was a ploy by Clinton back then to really try to manipulate things before the election.
RUSH: That’s exactly as I said. I think that was the beginning of a strategy for Democrats periodically to come out and attack Fox. This is an arrogant and very condescending party, and they live under so many myths: that they’re the kind ones, the tolerant ones, the open ones. They’re not. They’re the architects of political correctness, which is nothing more than an abridgement of free speech. These people want to shut down anything they don’t want to hear. They do not have the confidence of their ideas. They do not have the desire to spread those ideas because they can’t even be honest about them. This debate is just the latest in an attempt to marginalize Fox and convince as many people that Fox is unnewsworthy and unworthy, that it isn’t news and so forth.
The debate that you referenced was September 9th in 2003 at the Murphy Fine Arts Center on the Morgan State University campus in Baltimore. It was a Congressional Black Caucus Institute and Fox News Channel Democrat presidential candidates debate. The candidates that appeared in that debate were Carol Moseley Braun; Howard Dean; the Breck Girl; Dick Gephardt; Bob Graham; John Kerry (who served in Vietnam); Dennis Kucinich; Joe Lieberman and Al Sharpton. This is just one of the many appearances that Edwards has made on the Fox News Channel. Fox is probably in negotiations with the CBC, the Congressional Black Congress to do another one. We’ll have to wait.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just sent Roger Ailes an e-mail. I said, “Roger, we are definitely now in a country that is divided. There are two Americas, and there are no bridges.” There are two Americas, folks, and I said, “Roger, you need to move Fox News to Dubai. Follow Halliburton. We might have a branch office or take a vacation over there. Buy one of those houses they’re building on one of those islands. Just relocate to Dubai and be done with it.”