RUSH: A couple more thoughts on this CNN YouTube debate tonight. They’re hyping this YouTube thing, CNN has been all last week as something brand-new, never before seen, public participation in these debates and so forth. It’s going to be nothing but pandering. This is nothing new. You remember in 1992, the Richmond Virginia debate, we had Perot up there, we had Bill Clinton up there, and we had George H. W. Bush up there, the incumbent. This ponytailed guy stands up, and he says to the candidates, ‘Which one of you is going to treat us as your children?’ and that’s when Bush looked at his watch, was bored, and Clinton leapt to the mike. He just couldn’t wait to get to the answer first. What I’m thinking would be great, if a candidate wants to separate him or herself from the pack, the first one of these questions from YouTube that’s thrown out there, if it’s a stupid, dumb question, a candidate ought to say so. I appreciate the public being offered the opportunity here to ask these questions, but the fact of the matter is all we’re going to end up doing is pandering. We’re going to get questions like this all night, and we’re going to pander because we’re going to be afraid to answer what really needs to be talked about in these debates and this kind of thing. The ponytail guy’s question is a great illustration of that. That guy should have been knocked out of the ballpark.
A responsible candidate should have said, ‘What? We are not your parents; we’re not your father; and we’re not going to treat you that way.’ Of course that’s right up Clinton’s alley and he did, but if George H. W. Bush would have said something like that, he would have cleaned up because despite the fact that people are afraid of offending these public participants and the members of the audience in these debates, the real audience is people watching, and there are ways to distinguish yourself as a candidate. You don’t have to insult the questioner, the YouTube submitter and so forth, you can say, ‘Look, this doesn’t really get to the point. We appreciate the fact the public is asking us questions and so forth, and then launch and not get into a bunch of pandering. But these debates are really not debates. They’re clearly pandering.’ However, this one may be different tonight, based on something that happened on CNN yesterday. It was Blitzer’s Late Edition. This interview was billed as a preview of the debate tonight. David Bonior, the pit Yorkie, John Edwards’ campaign manager, said that Hillary Clinton’s record on health care issues was an absolute disaster.
‘An Alabama congressman a few minutes later speaking for Senator Obama…’ guy’s name is Arthur Davis ‘…said that a vote for Mrs. Clinton would resurrect the disputes that tarred the presidency of her husband. Larry Sabato from the University of Virginia said, ‘It’s past time to take the gloves off on the Democrat side. It’s amazing we’ve made it so far without seeing more of it.” And of course Bonior was out there saying, ‘With all due respect, the Clintons did not deliver on health care. They had a very important choice to make back in 1993, NAFTA or health care, they chose NAFTA,’ they botched it and so forth. It could be a harbinger of things to come. What’s interesting is that he’s the campaign manager for the Breck Girl, for John Edwards, and Edwards is vying to be the first female president. Hillary wants to be the first female president.
Along these lines, Esquire magazine, have you seen this? In their latest cover, I’ve gotta show you people on the Dittocam watching this. I’m going to see if I can zoom in here of that photo of John Edwards. Look at that pose he is engaging in there. What you may not be able to read is what it says above his head, and I don’t know if this was intended or not by the people at Esquire. ‘The sexiest woman alive.’ The little red banner with yellow font, the sexiest woman alive. This is the cheesiest pose I have ever seen. The camera is shot from below, the angle is below Edwards, so it’s looking up, and he’s gazing off in the distance, the sexiest woman alive, and the cover story is, ‘Can a white man still be elected president?’ Yep, can a white man still be elected president? Wasn’t it also Esquire that gave us Monica’s view of Clinton, sitting there, legs spread, tie tied long, all the way down to the net worth regions, the Monica view of Bill Clinton. So these guys, they love to break new ground, or at least plow old ground.
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