RUSH: Now, Nancy Pelosi melted down on CNN yesterday with Wolf Blitzer, who took her to task here, because he told her that her kook base is really angry that the Democrats have lost to Bush. Wolf said, ‘You know, your base is really frustrated, really angry, out there.’
PELOSI: I’m frustrated myself.
BLITZER: — that this war continues.
PELOSI: We sent it to the president, he vetoed it. Any further attempts to do that have been met by the 60-vote barrier in the United States Senate. Now, I’ll be the last person to give you a civics lesson about what that means, but what it does mean is that the Republicans in the Senate have now taken ownership of the war in Iraq. It was President Bush’s war, and now it is the Republicans’ and Congress’ war. And that marks a big turning point for us because we had hoped to have bipartisanship and redeploying the troops out of Iraq, to do so in a timely fashion.
RUSH: Admitting, therefore, and illustrating what I’ve always said, and that is, it’s all politics to them. It was Bush’s war, now it’s the Republicans’ and the Congress’ war. It’s the country’s war, Mrs. Pelosi, and you’re nowhere near it. Anybody watching Ken Burns’ PBS series on World War II called The War? I, as a powerful, influential member of the media, got a media screener copy. It’s seven DVDs. I loaded them in the Kaleidescape system that I have, and I haven’t been able to watch much of it, but the estimated deaths in the Bataan Death March, on the low end 6,000, on the high end, 11,000. Do you realize that the first year of the war in the Pacific Theater was going horribly for us? It was looking dire, and there were no discussions of quitting and getting out and withdrawing. There’s a couple little throwaway lib lines in this because it is Ken Burns, but this is basically just actual footage from World War II and survivors talking about various aspects of the war that they were involved in. There was no talk of quitting; no talk of withdrawing; no talk of redeploying, and it was going far worse than at any time in Iraq. Back to Pelosi here. Blitzer decided to stand up for the kook base. He wasn’t satisfied with that answer you just heard. He said, ‘So are you telling your angry base out there that the Democratic Party wants to see this war over with, wants to see the US troops home, that you, as speaker, there’s nothing you can do, you have to just throw your hands up and –‘
PELOSI: I didn’t say that at all.
BLITZER: Given the legislative problems in the Senate and the president’s stubborn refusal to back down, that there’s nothing that you can do?
PELOSI: How could you have ever gotten that impression —
BLITZER: You tell us —
PELOSI: — when I have said, for those who pay attention, is that we will hold this administration accountable time and time again for the conduct of this war in Iraq.
RUSH: The meltdown begins. She fires back at Wolf. ‘I’ve said this time and again, for those who pay attention.’ It’s a legitimate question from Wolf. ‘You’re saying there’s nothing you can do, it’s the Republicans’ war, nothing you can do.’ And of course there is nothing she can do, so she has to get mad at Wolf for putting it that way. Next question: ‘In the Gallup poll, the last one, only 24% of the American public thinks Congress is doing a good job.’
PELOSI: To tell you the truth, I don’t approve of the way the Congress is ending the war in Iraq myself. Your audience should not mistake the rating for Congress as a rating for the Democrats. We’re as high as we’ve ever been. We’re up 53% for the Republicans in terms of favorability of a political party in the Congress.
RUSH: And, finally, Wolf says, ‘If he holds firmly and he vetoes and you don’t have enough to override –‘ this is the SCHIP program, S-CHIP program, ‘If the president holds firm and he vetoes and you don’t have enough votes to override,’ which they don’t, ‘what happens to those six million or ten million children who might need that health insurance right away?’
PELOSI: The president gives new meaning to the biblical term ‘suffer little children.’ This is about as deep a value — deeply held value in America as you can have, care for our children.
BLITZER: And he’s also made this accusation against you and the Democrats that you’re looking for a political wedge, a political issue to score points. You really don’t care so much about the children; you really want to embarrass the president.
PELOSI: The president doesn’t think I care about children? I have five children. I have six grandchildren. I took the gavel on behalf of America’s children. This president will be haunted by legislation to support America’s children for as long as he is president, or as long as he resists giving health insurance to America’s children.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, let me explain what’s going on with the S-CHIP program. The Senate is probably going to pass it, and perhaps with a veto-proof margin. It’s over in the House where Nancy Pelosi can’t get enough people on her side of this for a veto-proof margin. Now, to review what this is, it’s an existing program. It provides health insurance for poor children in the country. The Democrats have proposed rewriting it to include ‘children’ up to and including the age of 25, to cover families of four with household incomes of $82,000. It proposes to cover all of these people with government insurance, government programs. It is a stealth way to incrementally start the whole ball rolling on socialized medicine. David Hogberg at the National Center for Policy Research calls it ‘socialized medicine on the installment plan,’ and the Republicans — of all people, Mel Martinez — have come up with a compromise in the Senate, which is actually based on a Heritage Foundation proposal, and it has two elements. ‘It would reauthorize SCHIP for eligible children, thereby covering children in families with incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level,’ and the second level is ‘it would enact a child health care tax credit for families with incomes between 200 and 300% of the poverty level.’
The virtue here is that it ‘would cover the population targeted by the Democrats, the families with incomes at or below 200% of the poverty level, but instead of forcing them to drop their current coverage and go on a government plan, would provide assistance to enable them to keep their current insurance plan.’ We’ll see what happens, but this is nothing more than a trick. If all they wanted to do was redo and authorize the program as it exists, nobody would really have a problem with it and the president wouldn’t, either. But the president understands what this is and how much it is going to cost, and that’s his primary opposition to it. Of course, Pelosi… I’m going to tell you something, folks. There are 12 spending bills that have to get done by October 1st, which is when? Monday. The Democrats are having all kinds of problems with nine of them.