RUSH: The Oprah was on Good Morning America today with the cohostette Diane Sawyer, and Diane Sawyer said, ‘You’ve written a speech, which is unusual for you.’
THE OPRAH: I have written a speech because I didn’t trust myself just to stand up there and talk, and this was too important of an issue, I thought, for me to be up there rambling around. Okay, this is the night before, it was 3 a.m. still working on my speech. Yes, I was. And I then — then I heard somebody say that they — that his staff helped me write the speech, which insulted me, since I was like doing my homework late at night working on it myself. I didn’t appreciate that.
RUSH: Oh. (crying) Somebody accused The Oprah of not writing her own speech! Welcome to politics, Oprah. I mean this is my point, once you get into it, you better know firsthand when you start what you’re making yourself a target for. Diane Sawyer said, ‘ I’ve never experienced that kind of energy,’ meaning all those people out there. ‘Everybody’s there because they’re concerned about the country.’ Denzel Washington chimes in with, ‘What are they saying? What are they most concerned about?’
THE OPRAH: I think what they’re concerned about is people don’t want to have to continue — to work so hard and still be poor. They don’t want to have to work so hard and still have to struggle so much, and that is a basic concern of everybody. You’re spending more, and more, and more money and — and feeling like you’re further and further behind. And that’s sort of the deepest sentiment.
RUSH: Well, are we surprised that an audience of Democrats’ primary concern would be how hard they have to work? And then, Mrs. Clinton’s going to come along and raise everybody’s taxes, which is going to force everybody to have to work even harder, so they’re going to have less money as Oprah says here to spend, and spend, and spend. Ignorance. The most expensive commodity. I don’t care if it’s organic or inorganic, ignorance, it is the most expensive commodity that we pay for in this country. Then Diane Sawyer says: Have you heard from Don Clintonleone? Have you talked to them?
THE OPRAH: No, I haven’t heard from the Clintons.
SAWYER: What would you say to Hillary?
THE OPRAH: I’ve always said this, that my being in support of Barack Obama is not my being against Hillary Clinton or anybody else.
RUSH: Yes, it is.
THE OPRAH: It’s just for this moment in time, this is what I know I am supposed to be doing. I feel compelled to do this. So my vote for is not a vote against anybody. It’s just a vote for.
RUSH: Nice spin. (laughter) Nice spin. Of course, it’s a vote against Hillary! Hillary is the perceived winner already. She’s the perceived front-runner. She is the inevitable winner, and here comes The Oprah! Of course, I understand what she’s saying. She’s voting for Obama, but it’s gotta mean she’s against somebody else. It just has to be. All right. It’s trouble time in Clinton City. From Manchester, New Hampshire: ‘A new poll shows that while the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president holds a comfortable lead in New Hampshire, the Democratic race has tightened dramatically. According to the latest WMUR/CNN poll, Hillary Clinton’s 20-point lead has vanished. She now has 31 percent support, with Barack Obama in a statistical tie at 30 percent. [The Breck Girl] is third with 16 percent, and Bill Richardson has slipped slightly to 7 percent. The poll was conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center over the weekend. Oprah Winfrey held a rally for Obama on Sunday, and it might have given him a bounce… On the Republican side, Mitt Romney is leading with 32 percent support. Rudy Giuliani and John McCain both have 19 percent. Mike Huckabee has climbed slightly to 9 percent, and Ron Paul has 7 percent.’
So Obama and President Clinton are tied. Romney remains strong. ‘Hillary Rodham Clinton’s backup plan if she falters in Iowa can be summed up in two words: New Hampshire. Clinton’s Democratic team is preparing television ads [in New Hampshire] criticizing Barack Obama’s health care plan and working to build what campaigns call a firewall. If the Obama presidential campaign ignites in Iowa, she wants to be ready to cool him off in a state where her organization is strong and her support has proven durable.’ Really? We just heard (Howard Cosell impression) that she’s statistically tied. Now, this is an AP story. What is it about these attacks? I thought the Clintons didn’t attack people. Remember the Bob Dole debate with Bill Clinton in 1996, and Dole said something. I forget what it was, he launched into Clinton, and Clinton standing there solemnly, holding the microphone (Clinton impression), ‘No attack — no attack — ever fed a hungry child.’ Remember that? And the audience swooned. (screams of ecstasy) ‘Oh! Oh! Oh! He’s so, so wonderful!’ So I would say back to Mrs. Clinton: ‘No attack ever fed a hungry child.’ That’s what Obama ought to say. Don’t get Oprah to say it if you don’t want to. Get somebody. Get your wife to say, ‘No attack ever fed a hungry child,’ or, ‘No attack ever got anybody health care,’ because that’s what she’s going to be attacking on. ‘No attack ever got anybody health care.’
Now, this is the strangest headline of the day. It is in the New York Daily News. ‘Bill Clinton to Aid Hillary’s Campaign.’ What the hell has he been doing? I’m going to give you a little secret about this. Let me give you the details of this story first. ‘Bubba to the rescue! Alarmed by his wife’s slide in the polls and disarray within her backbiting campaign, a beside-himself Bill Clinton has leaped atop the barricades and is furiously plotting a cure… ‘She’s in big trouble and he knows it,’ a top Democratic operative and Hillary Clinton booster told the Daily News. Sources familiar with the ex-President’s thinking say he doesn’t believe his wife’s situation is desperate. But he’s unhappy with her operation — once hailed as a juggernaut — and concerned she could lose the Democratic nomination without major alterations in strategy and staffing. … Another Democrat with close connections to the Clinton campaign describes Bill Clinton as ‘very engaged and very agitated. He’s yelling at (chief strategist) Mark Penn a lot.’ Penn laughed off the idea that he’s on the hot seat. ‘That’s funny,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working with Bill Clinton through thick and thin for 10 years, exchanging views.’ … Sources close to the former President say he and the candidate are talking constantly, but sharing very little of what they’re discussing with subordinates. Pouncing on a…’
(laughter) Who do they think they’re dealing with here? She’s got ‘experience’! She shouldn’t be able to work this out with Der Schlick. She’s so experienced, they’re not going to tell us what they’re talking about. ‘Pouncing on a report that revealed Obama staked out stridently liberal positions in a 1996 candidate questionnaire, Hillary Clinton’s campaign argued his past record is easy ammunition for the GOP. Obama spokesman Bill Burton fired back, ‘For a candidate who 50% of the country says they won’t consider voting for, raising questions about electability is a curious strategy.” They are firing back. That is a nice one. Now, here’s the dirty little secret, folks. Now, I want you Democrats to listen to this, because whether you will admit it to yourselves or not after you hear me say it, you know it’s true. ‘Bill Clinton to Aid Hillary’s Campaign.’ He has been working on Hillary’s campaign. I think he’s one of the reasons it’s in trouble! All of this conventional wisdom that people are voting for her because they really want him, this is just Drive-By Media pap, folks. It is the Drive-By Media that’s enamored with this couple. A majority of the American people are not, and never have been. Bill Clinton has been working on this campaign, and what’s happened to it since he started? It’s imploding. He hasn’t helped; he never helps. You couldn’t save Gray Davis.
The guy has a track record. He went out and he endorsed a Democrat candidate for governor of Hawaii, and a Republican won: Linda Lingle, a female. I have explained this many times before. He is not a big vote-getter. He never has been, not on the national scene. He couldn’t win majorities in his own presidential races, and he wouldn’t have been president the first time if it weren’t for Ross Perot. He couldn’t save Gray Davis. He and she, both Clintons, lost Congress in 1994! This is always a complete myth, that the Clintons are a juggernaut, that the country loves them; the country can’t wait to have them back, and that Bill Clinton can ride in at the last moment and save the day. When he rides in, he ends up hurting the people that he’s trying to help. Look, she’s a loser. She had to move to one of the bluest of blue states to win office in the United States Senate. She knew she had no chance in Arkansas, and that’s a marginal state for Democrats. They’ve known her for years there. So the idea that Bill or Hillary Clinton are these popular politicians who win huge elections has always been a myth. It has always been a lie. When I saw this headline today: ‘Bill Clinton to Aid Hillary’s Campaign,’ I asked: What’s he been doing? He’s been on this campaign. He’s been public, and he’s been making statements, and some of them have been impolitic. Some of them have been stupid, some of them he’s continued his tradition for lying. He has already been involved in this campaign, and you can see what happened to it from the moment he got involved.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ll give you another example where Clinton went in to save the day and blew it for another candidate. Does the name Kathleen Kennedy Townsend ring a bell, ladies and gentlemen? She was running for governor of Maryland, said to be the runaway winner. And, of course, Clinton went in there, she gets beat. I’m telling you, this Clinton juggernaut thing, how much they’re loved and in the Democrat Party, maybe, but not throughout the Democrat Party. Look at the Obama and The Oprah show. They’re not this national juggernaut, and he does move in there and does more harm when he starts trying to help people. Sheila Jackson Lee during a Clinton campaign appearance phone call, said this about Senator Obama.
LEE: All of a sudden you are altering that position, which I think is something that has occurred with Senator Obama. Then on some of the raw issues that impact in Arkansas and Texas, that is inconsistent.
RUSH: We don’t have the whole call here, but they put her out on a conference call to trash Obama for flip-flopping on previous liberal positions. And what she’s basically saying here is that Obama is too liberal. So here, let’s go Ann Lewis, as you know, one of Hillary’s buds. MSNBC Live, Andrea Mitchell is talking to Ann Lewis, says, ‘Part of her argument is that her experience of first lady gave her this special qualification to be president of the United States. Do you really think that being first lady is the experience that people believe is the qualification to be president and commander-in-chief?’
LEWIS: What Hillary Clinton offers is someone who’s had years of experience at making the change. So it isn’t experience in a vacuum and it isn’t change in a vacuum because, left to themselves, either word’s just a bumper sticker. The question is, what do you have experience at doing? The question is, how could you make that change occur? And that’s what she’s offering.
RUSH: What did I just hear? We just heard Ann Lewis say that Hillary’s experience is in bringing change. Now she’s responsible for the S-CHIP, she made peace in Northern Ireland, she brings change? I thought the experience was she’s flown with her husband to China and been around kids and stood up for them and fought for them for 35 years and all of that. Mitchell says, ‘You’re emphasizing change. That’s because a lot of polling is telling us that people, contrary to the New York Times’ conclusions in their poll, people do want change this year, more than experience–‘ By the way, that New York Times poll yesterday was sick. That New York Times poll was talking about how everybody loves Hillary and Bill and all this sort of stuff, and their experience. Do you realize that was not a sample of registered voters, it was not a sample of likely voters. It was a sample of the American people. Yes. It’s totally bogus in a campaign poll. It was a total trumped-up Drive-By poll. This is actually a good question from Andrea Mitchell. ‘Well, wait a minute, you’re now emphasizing change instead of experience? Because a lot of polling is telling people that they want change this year, more than experience? Is that a cause of concern in your campaign?’
LEWIS: Hillary’s experience is that of making change that makes a difference in people’s lives. So as first lady, she worked very hard and was really responsible for the establishment of S-CHIP, the children’s health insurance, that has meant health insurance, access to health insurance for millions of children. She worked with parties of Northern Ireland, asked the leaders of Northern Ireland who met with her last week. She worked alongside Bill Clinton to create the structure for peace over and over. I think as you look at Hillary Clinton’s record, it is whatever position she’s held, she has worked to make change, and that’s change that works for people’s lives.
RUSH: I hate to tell you this, folks, but S-CHIP, whether you like it or not, was a Republican Congress idea in 1997! So the experience thing ain’t working because polls are telling people, ah, hell with experience, we want change. And so, just right out of the box, and, oh, okay, fine, we can do that, Hillary’s experience is in bringing change. This is pathetic. They can’t do anything right! They can’t get anything right. They can’t do anything right whatsoever. So experience doesn’t work. Okay, fine, people want change, oh, the Clintons, they can come up with an idea for that. She’s expert at the experience of bringing change. There’s another story, this is in the New York Times today: ‘Feeling Heat, Clinton Tries Iowa Up Close.’ Couple things in this story. It seems negative on Hillary, if you read it, which is a shock for the New York Times. I think what they might be doing here is managing expectations. The story talks about how the Clintons have never done well in Iowa before, never even really done Iowa, but news flash, New York Times, neither has Obama. So it’s a little puff piece, she’s not doing well but that’s okay, the Clintons have never done well in Iowa, so managing expectations. Obama’s not been there, either.