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RUSH: Jack in McAllen, Texas, I’m glad you waited, sir. You’re next on the EIB Network.

CALLER: Rush.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: All knowing, all seeing, all caring.

RUSH: All everything, sir. All everything. Yes, all everything.

CALLER: I’m a Vietnam veteran. My son is an Afghanistan veteran. And keep kicking their butts.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: And don’t let this issue die. Keep jamming it down their throats. In south Texas we got a saying: ‘Don’t piss on my boots and try to tell me it’s raining.’

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: And that’s what they’re doing.

RUSH: That ought to be the Media Matters motto.

CALLER: Well, I’m glad you appreciate it. Keep kicking their butts.

RUSH: I liked it when you said ass first.

CALLER: Oh, okay, okay.

RUSH: Say it again, say it again.

CALLER: Keep kicking their ass.

RUSH: And what’s that south Texas saying?

CALLER: Don’t piss on my boots and try to tell me it’s raining.

RUSH: That’s Jack from McAllen, Texas, a loyal member of the El Rushbo audience.

To Eugene, Oregon. Chris, you’re next on the program. Great to have you.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. You’re an honorable man, and you’re doing a great service to this country. I just wanted to make a comment about how ill-informed a great deal of Americans are. They will not take the time to get well informed on various things. They’re so busy making a living for themselves and paying their bills and dealing with their families and all their private parts of their lives and everything, and I think that this is a problem in our country, that these people are so involved with their own lives that they seldom will take the time to investigate things that they may hear over the media, and I think this is a great example with what you’re dealing with in Congress right now, whether it’s people that are truly misinformed, they just throw this out and expect the great deal of the American public to take it at face value.

RUSH: Well, because they think that the majority of the public’s going to get the news from their willing accomplices in the Drive-By Media. And they’re right. They’re right.

CALLER: Yeah. I just encourage the American citizens to take the time and find out what the details are about all sorts of things, and especially this mess that they’re trying to throw at you and others, to find out what the truth is. I live in a very liberal city, and I’m amazed when I try to debate with people, and they’re just not knowledgeable. They just believe the bumper stickers or the single little comments they hear in the newspaper or the mainstream.

RUSH: You’re very right. It is not just that people are busy. Americans have a lot of leisure time, and there are a lot of things they can do with that leisure time, like watch video games and television, golf, whatever they do. And a lot of people don’t want to be exposed to this stuff this soon before an election. But I think that’s all the more reason here to try to keep it alive and deal with it. We put the original video of what I said on YouTube, and it was anywhere from number one to number five in a host of categories for three or four days, and that spreads it beyond this audience. The YouTube crowd is a demographic people are still trying to get their arms around in terms of understanding who they are, what their interests are, what they do when they’re not watching YouTube and this sort of thing, and it’s become a popular vehicle for that. We’ve developed a rapid response team. YouTube tries to keep people like me off, but we found ways to bypass it and get things up there. We always have to try to stay ahead of things like that because it’s common practice. Censorship on the left is common practice. So I appreciate your concerns.

I’ve always had ultimately faith in the American people. You can say what you just said, and you’re right, and a lot of people are standing up and shouting they agree with you. But do you realize — I’ve gotta find this story in the stack. This is an amazing statistic, and I’ve mentioned it before. Since the turn of the century, only four Democrats have gotten more than 50% of the vote in presidential races. It may not even be that many. The idea that this is a Democrat-owned country or a majority-Democrat country simply isn’t true. Look at who won the election in 2000 and who won the election in 2004. Look at Reagan. These people in the Drive-Bys can be reached. This is why so many of us here lament the lack of genuine leadership on our side. People do respond to leadership. Leadership is bold; leadership is confidence; leadership is not being defensive about things. People will respond to it; it can be done. The people you’re talking about can be reached. This program makes the effort to do that each and every day.

Now, having said that, Chris, being concerned that whatever the Drive-Bys put out there sticks and that there’s nothing anybody can do to change it, look, I’ll use myself as a personal example on this. I’m in my 20th year of doing this, and over the course of these 20 years, I’ve lost count of the number of episodes like this one. There have been many. This one may take the cake, but, hey, it was no small thing after the Oklahoma City bombing when the president of the United States tried to blame me for it through his spokesman. That’s no small thing, folks. It is no small thing when, at the White House Correspondents Dinner at the Hilton — 1,200 people in there — the president of the United States tells a joke about me implying I am a racist. That is no small thing when the president of the United States tries to get that out there. You remember the wild distortions during the Michael J. Fox episode. You remember more than I can have time to recount for you here. My point is that while at the time they happen, I know that they can disturb you, and the Oklahoma City bombing thing, that’s right on par with this that’s happening here, but through all of this, I never lost a radio station because of it. Through all of this, we haven’t lost a sponsor because of it. We haven’t lost any audience.

Another thing: Dingy Harry, on the floor of the Senate this past Monday, four days ago, talks about my steadily dwindling audience. If my audience is steadily dwindling, Dingy Harry, then why pay me any mind? The truth of the matter is what Tom Daschle said after the 2002 elections. He came out, they thought they had those elections wrapped up, Chris. Remember the Wellstone memorial? They thought the election was over, just like they think this one’s over. They think Hillary is the president, just a matter of time. Going to talk about that after the break. There’s some Democrats worshiped about this sense of inevitability. So the Democrats thought they had the 2002 midterms wrapped up. They were going to take back Congress, and they lost seats. Tom Daschle came out of a morning meeting, and he was white, he was palpably frightened. He had just been shown research, he said, from his experts, radio ratings. What he found was that the audience of this show was not just Republicans and conservatives, and he was stunned. They all thought and think that this audience is simply all conservatives and I’m just preaching to the choir. What his experts told him was that there were Democrats who listened to this program and many of them had changed their minds about things.

They lie to themselves about a lot of things. They lie to themselves about their opposition. They lie to themselves about their enemies. They lie to themselves about their own prominence. They lie to themselves about their own successes, and the Drive-Bys help fuel this by doing puff piece news stories on them. They’re never challenged. Look at the coverage Mrs. Clinton gets. I’ve got a story in the stack today from Anne Kornblut at the Washington Post marveling at how Mrs. Clinton gets away with avoiding hard questions, just like they used to marvel at what a great liar Bill Clinton was. Rather than excoriate her for not taking them, they marvel at how she’s masterfully managing her campaign and so forth. So they lie to themselves about a lot of things. They’re lying to themselves about the damage that they’ve done to me. They haven’t nicked me. They’re going to keep trying. But they haven’t been able to do it. So while you sit out there and think the American people are buying all this stuff, don’t jump to that conclusion too quickly.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here are those statistics on Democrats and the majority of votes they get. ‘In the past 60 years, Democrats got more than one half of the vote twice. It remains a fact that the party, even during two terms of Bill Clinton, has not broken 50% of the vote in a presidential election in more than 30 years, and has done it only twice in the past 60 years. Plus, there’s plenty of precedent for a seemingly insurmountable lead to evaporate in the blink of an eye. Think Michael Dukakis in the summer of ’88. You’ve been told that the Democrats are the majority party; you’ve been told it so many times you probably believe it. Some call it an urban legend, others truth by repetition perfected by the spinmeister theories of Joseph Goebbels. The Democrats are not the majority party in this country. They are the majority party in the media. Mrs. Clinton is not inevitable,’ which takes me to this story. I had this from yesterday.

This is in The Politico: ‘Democrats Grapple with the Fear Factor.’ This sounds just like the circumstances I was just describing to you that existed in 2002. ‘For Democrats, things rarely get much better than this. In 2008, they’ll be running to succeed an unpopular incumbent, against an opposition that has rarely been more disorganized or dispirited. Polls show a Democratic advantage on major issues nearly across the board,’ except for abortion. ‘Amid all these favorable signs, it’s only natural that some of the party’s top strategists would be pondering the same question: Wonder how we’ll screw it up this time? ‘We are a little bit of a shell-shocked political party. We somehow or another always figure out a way to blow it,’ Democratic strategist James Carville said. ‘Democrats have to talk their way out of winning.’ Carville was not exactly serious, but not exactly kidding. Even as all the trends seem to be breaking their way, Democrats still sound a bit like a boy who has been beaten up too many times on the playground: certain another punch is coming.

‘It’s more than paranoia. After all, many of the formulas political scientists use to predict elections suggested Democrats would take the White House in 2000 and 2004. And it remains a fact that the party — even during two terms of Bill Clinton — has not broken 50 percent of the vote in a presidential election in more than 30 years, and it has done it only twice in the past 60 years. ‘No matter how the stars are aligned now, the stars keep moving,’ said Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor and almost presidential candidate. ‘Republicans have just gotten very good at this,’ Carville said of presidential politics. ‘Somehow or another, in the last three elections, they’ve tended to close a little better than we have. No. 3 is that they have a more disciplined and effective echo chamber,” that means me and talk radio.

‘A portion of Democratic unease relates to the source of the party’s improved prospects. Democrats’ resurgence ‘is a result of a complete implosion of the Republican Party,’ as Carville put it. ‘This is not like some great enthusiasm for Democrats out there.” The dirty little secret, though, that nobody’s talking about is a Celinda Lake poll. She’s half of the Battleground Poll, and they are very worried. There are 31 swing congressional districts out there where she doesn’t run well. She might win the state that those districts are in, but she might be a drag on a Democrat incumbent in that district, and there are 31 of them. That’s a significant number. The Democrats are very worried about that. In addition, there are some candidates in the Democrat Party who are telling the DNC, ‘Don’t send her to campaign. I don’t want to run with her, coming out and campaigning for her.’ Her negatives are sky high. For somebody who’s inevitably going to be the next president, 49%, she is, as Karl Rove said, fatally flawed. Yet the conventional wisdom is, just get these Democrat primaries over, cancel ’em, put Mrs. Clinton as the nominee right now, let’s save everybody some money because she’s the next president anyway. It ain’t the case.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to stay on the theme here that this notion, this conventional wisdom of inevitability for Mrs. Clinton is another one of these attempts by everybody to get everybody in the country, as many as possible, to accept it. But the Democrats, behind closed doors, or cloakrooms, or wherever they huddle together, are not nearly as confident with this as they are in public.

Another story from The Politico today: ‘The 2008 election offers the most diverse array of presidential candidates in history. But this rainbow campaign will hinge on the most durable reality of American politics: White men matter most.’ The conventional wisdom is we hear about the gender gap, how Republicans can’t get the female vote. I have pointed out for years that the dirty little secret of presidential politics is the white male vote. The Reagan Democrats, these are white southerners, they lost them and they’ve been impugning them ever since, making fun of their religious beliefs; making fun of the fact they like NASCAR; making fun of the fact that they got gun racks in the back of pickup trucks; that they hang around in beer taverns in Tennessee at midnight on Friday night and laugh at Barack Obama commercials or Harold Ford commercials. They’ve lost ’em. They’ve been desperately trying to get them back in their weird way.

That is only half of the story, though. ‘Every election cycle, a new slice of the electorate — suburban mothers, churchgoing Hispanics, bicycling Norwegians — comes into vogue as reporters and analysts study the polls and try to divine new secrets about who wins and why in American politics.’ Probably the most famous example of this is the soccer moms for Bill Clinton. ‘The truth is that the most important factor shaping the 2008 election will almost certainly be the same one that has been the most important in presidential elections for the past 40 years: the flight of white male voters away from the Democratic Party.’ This is something that The Politico is trying to warn the Democrats about. I find this interesting, too. ‘A more powerful what-if is to imagine that Democratic nominees had succeeded in narrowing the white male gap to even the low 20s instead of the mid-20s. Both Kerry and Gore would have won easily.’ If the Democrats ever lost the black vote, they would be finished. You can play this two ways. If the Democrats ever lost 20% of the black vote, they would be finished.

‘In 2008, Democrats are assembling behind a front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, with singular problems among white males. Polls show her support among this group is approaching the record lows scored by Democrats during the peak of Ronald Reagan’s popularity in the 1980s. Some recent hypothetical matchups — which are highly fluid at this stage of a contest — showed Clinton winning roughly a third of white males in a race against Republican Rudy Giuliani. In the past three decades, the only two Democrats to win the presidency, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, were politicians who organized campaigns around rhetorical and ideological pitches that were designed to reassure voters skeptical of liberal values.’ There’s another dirty little secret, ladies and gentlemen, and this is even more fascinating. Do you know what else the Democrats are concerned about? They are really concerned about whether people in this country are indeed ready to vote for, A, a woman president, or, B, a black president.

This is from the Washington Times: ‘Is the United States of America honestly ready to elect a woman or an African American president? Not only is that a legitimate question, but it is one that haunts a number of Democrats who feel they are being rushed into making a decision that will leave them highly vulnerable in the general election.’ So I’ve got three stories here. They are in the Drive-By Media. Well, Politico’s a website. Nobody’s picking this up on television. Three stories about fears deep in the bowels of the Democrat Party and of the inevitability of Hillary Clinton’s election. Now, I know that you’re thinking, ‘Rush, come on, of course the country is ready to elect a woman; of course the country is ready to elect a black.’ I don’t even think that’s a question, but to the Democrats it is. You have to understand something. The Democrats look at people and see the things about them that set them apart from them. They notice sexual orientation; they notice gender; they notice race. They are the ones that do this. They’re the ones that categorize people into these groups. The real question here, is America ready to elect a bunch of socialists? That’s the question. Do we want a socialist country? Do we want a top-heavy government that’s infringing on everybody’s freedoms? That’s what the Democrats don’t get. If they want to continue to look at it as a gender or race issue, fine. And since they do, let’s continue with this story, and you will find out just to what extent they are dealing with it.

Now, this piece is written by Douglas MacKinnon in the Washington Times. He has served as a press secretary to former Senator Dole. He was in the White House and the Pentagon. He’s also an author. ‘For decades, my party, the Republican Party, has basically nominated the next white male in line. In 2000, when there was really not an heir apparent, George W. Bush wisely assumed the mantle and was nominated and then elected. During those same decades, the Democrats would cannibalize themselves until the last man standing got the nomination.’ I remember what he’s talking about, these debates. Gary Hart and Walter Mondull got into an argument, a debate one night, about who would get us out of the world fastest. (doing impressions) ‘I’ll get us out of South Africa.’ ‘Well, I’ll get us out of there.’ ‘Well, I’ll get us out of Timbuktu.’ ‘Well, I’ll get us out of China.’ It was comical to watch.

But, as Mr. MacKinnon says, ‘As we approach the 2008 presidential election the parties have reversed themselves. Now it is the Republicans who have no ‘next-in-line’ and must engage in protracted and ugly infighting until a bloodied victor emerges. While this transpires, it seems the Democrats have decided that Sen. Hillary Clinton is their ‘next-in-line’ with Sen. Barack Obama a close second. Shouldn’t this be good news for the Democrats? Should they not rejoice in the fact that for all intents and purposes, they have their nominee while we still have to engage in months of name-calling and mudslinging? You would think so, but a number of my Democratic friends privately tell me it’s anything but good news. Being that the Democratic Party is many times held hostage by political correctness, my friends have no desire to publicly wonder if our nation is ‘mature’ enough to elect a woman or an African-American. While common sense seems to indicate that it is a subject that must be addressed, the Democrats and much of the media seem to be doing all they can to ignore it. But at what cost? A recent survey by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake indicates that it may well be at a very severe cost. The internal poll showed that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are trailing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, in 31 Democrat-held House districts. Again, that’s 31 Democrat-held House districts representing almost 20 million people,’ forget the national numbers here, where Hillary trails Giuliani.

‘Why? Well, could be a lot of reasons. For Hillary, it could be that even when Democrats take a moment to think that we had George H. W. Bush for four years, Bill Clinton for the next eight years, George W. Bush for the next eight years, and potentially Mrs. Clinton (with Bill coming back) for another eight years, it may be just too much. These Democrats may well think that ceding the Oval Office to just two families for almost 30 years is overkill. We may like royalty, but it needs to be across the pond. For Mr. Obama, it may come down to something as basic as his lack of experience. Maybe these Democrats just don’t see this young senator in the White House quite yet. Or maybe, just maybe, it may be something as simple as the fact that a large number of voters are not ready to vote for a woman or a black for president.

‘The trick that pollsters now use to try and ascertain bias is to say to the voter, ‘OK, you are open-minded enough to vote for a woman or an African American. But what about your neighbor? Is he or she as open-minded as you?’ Many times, the response to this question will be, ‘No way. I know for a fact they won’t vote for a woman or a minority.’ Once the pollsters have this information, they usually subtract anywhere from 10 percent to 15 percent from the number of those who say they will vote for a woman or a minority. As this drama plays out, my Democratic friends feel that they are being painted into a deeper and deeper corner with no escape possible. They feel that they are powerless to stop a process that will see them end up with a preordained nominee who will lose in the general election.’ This is the third of three stories about this very subject today.

‘Democratic women I know openly wonder if voters can get past Hillary’s polarizing politics, her liberal mindset, her love of big government, and her desire to raise taxes. More than that, they fear that not enough American women are prepared to vote for a fellow woman,’ and that’s been my point all along, with a great indicator being the failure of Ségolène Royal in France to get a majority of the female vote, as a socialist, in a socialist country. ‘As we race toward the selection of our nominees, the media and the Democratic leadership may not want to speculate as to what role bias against a woman or an African-American may play in this election, but clearly a number of rank-and-file Democrats want it discussed. More importantly, they want it addressed while they still have a chance to effect the outcome.’ Douglas MacKinnon in the Washington Times today.

Let’s go back to one of the previous stories, and that is the white male vote. Okay, you have the white male vote, Democrats have lost it, a majority for quite a few years. You have the Democrats all concerned about whether people are going to vote for Hillary, women, blacks, will they vote for a woman president or a black president and so forth. They are worried about this stuff and you contrast this with this era of inevitability we seem to be in where Mrs. Clinton is already anointed as the nominee and practically anointed as the president in 2008. Now, on this business about white southern males abandoning the Democrat Party, this is why it is important, ladies and gentlemen, to continue to characterize Mrs. Clinton as a woman that reminds you of your first wife, maybe your first and second wives, Nurse Ratched, or what have you. Point is, let’s ’em focus on their race and their female issues and whether people will vote for a black or a woman, because I don’t think there’s any doubt on. I think it’s about policy and issues. It always is. This is what the Democrats don’t get because they can’t be honest about their policies. They can’t be honest about their issues. They would die politically if they ever told anybody what their real plans are. So they get distracted and all this other stuff. The real question is whether or not the people of this country in 2008 want to elect a socialist president who will install a socialist government.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Sally in Ann Arbor, Michigan — you gotta be surrounded.

CALLER: (laughing) Yeah, we do what we can to keep our heads above water.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: You know what, I’ve got a question for you, and then just a little comment on that point. Back to your point about Clinton’s prospects of getting in the White House, the question is, to what extent do you think Pelosi is acting as a drag on Clinton’s prospects? In other words, Pelosi as a scary dress rehearsal for having a freaky female in the White House?

RUSH: Sally, here’s a woman saying this. This is what scares the hell out of Democrats.

CALLER: Well, not only that, I’m living in a state where we have Jennifer Granholm, a female governor who has, sticking through to her liberal principles, she just raised the state income tax; she’s adding a 6% services tax. This is in the state that’s the 50th in terms of growth in the union. We have the highest unemployment, and what are these idiots doing in the state capitol? I’ve gotta throw some Republicans into that, too, because they went along with her. It’s spend, spend, spend, and tax, tax, tax. All you have to do is look at Michigan and you know what you’re going to get if that Hillary woman gets into the White House, which I don’t think she will and I pray she won’t.

RUSH: We’ve had so many irate Michiganders calling here since this deal was struck on Monday. They were going to shut down the government, but all they gotta do is look at Washington, there’s revenue pouring into the treasury in Washington nobody ever expected to be pouring in. There’s a reason for it: It’s the tax cuts and they’re sticking with them.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: There’s no way a liberal Democrat, female or male, is going to do that.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Jennifer Granholm is doing what she was born to do: raise taxes. She’s a liberal Democrat. Now, as to Pelosi, I thought at one point that Pelosi could be a drag on Hillary because Hillary has been trying to stay in the center, avoid substantive answers on anything so as to avoid being portrayed as a liberal, which is death. Now, Pelosi is the exact opposite. Pelosi is a full-fledged liberal, is proud of it, and out there talking about it. But she hasn’t been saying much lately.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: You may be on to something about that. Pelosi, when she was elected, thought she was running that town.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: And Mrs. Clinton saying at home, ‘Go ahead, Ms. Pelosi, you think you’re running this town; I’ll show you who’s running this town in a few short months.’ I don’t think there’s going to be any drag. I think Hillary is her biggest drag. Hillary is the biggest drag on Hillary. You know, this business about women voting for Hillary or not, and Democrats, whether the country is going to vote for a black, the bottom line, it’s simple. It really is about whether the country wants socialism in its leaders. You want socialists, you want a socialist government. This race stuff, we are so past that, and we’re so past the women thing. The Brits have elected Margaret Thatcher; the world is used to successful women leaders. This is just the way the Democrats look at things. Snerdley pointed something out to me. Let me use myself as an example here. I started this program in 1988, and all businesses — this is not a criticism of anybody. It’s an illustration. In 1988, there was no such thing as the successful syndicated radio program in the daytime. Additionally, there was no such thing as a radio talk show at any time that did not have guests. All of the experts, the people that study ratings and all that sort of stuff, all of these people wished me well, but they said this isn’t going to happen.

Well, of course, both have happened. The most successful syndicated radio show in history, long form, is in the daytime, and it has no guests, rarely has guests. There was another thing, AM radio was on the way out. There was no reason to listen to AM, because FM is playing music and is much better quality, AM static, no reason to listen. AM is thriving. So all the conventional wisdom went down the tubes and it went down the tubes on the power of content. It went down the tubes on the strength of content, quality. People listen to this program because it’s a good show. They like listening to it. It offers them lots of things. Well, politics is the same way. We have these pollsters, and these political scientists, and these experts, they’re already looking down the road to November of ’08, 13 months away and they’re already casting lines in the water, ‘This ain’t going to work, and that can’t work, and Hillary can’t get the black vote or white vote; Democrats can’t run these two candidates because the country’s still racist, sexist, and bigoted and so forth,’ and that’s how they look at the country.

I guarantee you, if Margaret Thatcher had been an American and had run for president, at the time she was elected prime minister in Great Britain, she would have won in this country, and had the timing been different than Reagan. If somebody like Justice Thomas ever wanted to run for president, I guarantee you he would win the White House. It’s about content and quality. It’s about the power of personality and leadership, and Mrs. Clinton is not exhibiting any. Mrs. Clinton’s gone into prevent defense, folks. Mrs. Clinton is avoiding tough questions. She’s sitting comfortably with this national 30-point lead over Obama. And if you believe that, then I’ve got a couple things I’d like to sell you. It doesn’t mean anything right now, that poll. None of these polls mean anything, but Mrs. Clinton is not dynamic. She is not likable. She does not have charisma. And she has yet been anointed. She’s probably going to win the nomination, but that’s not even a slam-dunk yet because not a vote’s been cast. She’s no slam-dunk for the White House. She’s not new; she’s not dynamic; she doesn’t have the power of content and personality leading her. She’s trying to hide all of that. She’s trying to hide the content because she doesn’t have any, or it’s dangerous to her if her genuine content got out of there.

What do you think the laugh is all about? That’s the other thing the Democrats are worried about is that laugh. They really are. They ought to be. That laugh is not normal. It doesn’t happen at normal times. It doesn’t happen when there are things that are funny to laugh about. That’s weird. That laugh is just odd. It’s uncomfortable and everybody has a feeling about it when they hear it, ‘Wait a minute, why’s she laughing? There’s nothing funny about the question that she was just asked.’ She laughs because she doesn’t like the question. The laugh is a signal to the guy that asked the question, ‘Do you like your testicles attached, or do you want them in my lockbox?’ That’s how people look at her. This sense of inevitability. So the conventional wisdom on so many things can be proven wrong with content, quality, the power of personality in an individual, and admit it, folks, isn’t that what we’re all looking for here, and we don’t think we’ve got, we don’t think we’ve found yet? You dig deep in yourself and ask yourself that, you’ll find that’s exactly what is bothering you about this.

Let’s see. I referenced this story earlier. Here’s a great example of Mrs. Clinton not taking on serious questions and issues and purposely setting it up so she doesn’t have to. Brent Bozell in a piece posted yesterday at a number of places, Media Research Center and NewsBusters.org. ‘Hillary’s Sunday morning interview blitz of September 23. Why do the media pine for her so? Michelle Cottle of the New Republic gave the typical liberal answer: ‘She’s a celebrity. She and Bill have passed some point where they’re no longer just politicians. They’re rock stars.” So to media groupies, if you’re rock stars, you’re rock stars, no questions asked, and you’re qualified to do whatever you want to do and get away with whatever you want to try to get away with. ‘There is absolutely no doubt that liberals really do think of the Clintons in rock-star terms, and the ‘objective’ media have not merely treated them that way with a long-running assembly line of dazzled profiles and shoe-polishing interviews. … On CNN, Washington Post reporter Anne Kornblut explained that Hillary always ‘picks her targets’ in the media in a very calculating way. ‘When she decided to talk to the Washington Post, she picked columnists that she wanted to speak to, and … hasn’t done interviews with the beat reporters, for example. And this is not just true of the Washington Post. It’s true everywhere. And it’s worked to her benefit so far, but it’s a very specific strategy.’

So here’s an example of a reporter who’s being dodged. Anne Kornblut will not get an interview with Hillary. That’s fine with Anne Kornblut, because she thinks the strategy is masterful. So this is allowing Hillary to assume things about herself that aren’t true, that she is running away with everything. The Drive-Bys do love her. This rock star analogy of Bozell’s is brilliant. It does explain why they’re treated the way they are. Look, rock stars, that’s a specific analogy, rock stars get away with trashing hotel rooms, they get away with all kinds of reprobate behavior, and they’re still loved, admired, adored, and looked up to in groupie fashion, and, by gosh, that is exactly the way the Clintons are looked at. So she’s hiding, she’s gone into her prevent defense. We have a saying in football: The prevent defense prevents one thing — victory.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I think it’s funny. Hillary Clinton goes out there without objection, she can pick reporters that she wants to speak to. Yet George W. Bush was interviewed by Juan Williams of the Fox News Channel. He also works at NPR. NPR refused to run Juan Williams’ interview with George W. Bush because Bush picked Williams for the interview. But Hillary is praised for picking reporters. This is a grand strategy that she’s exceedingly doing well with.

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