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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: Barack Obama. This was an historic win, and I’m going to tell you, I was on Fox News last night. I was watching Fox News, and it was about midnight, and I got an e-mail from Greta Van Susteren saying, ‘Will you come on if you’re watching this, and join our panel?’ Laura Ingraham, Susan Estrich, and Shep Smith were there. So I said, ‘Yeah, okay.’ I called in. We have the audio sound bites of this. Shep had the first question. I wanted to talk about Obama. He wanted to know my reaction to the Republican side, so I dutifully did that. But I’m going to tell you, this is historic last night. Barack Obama: the first black presidential candidate to win an election in the presidential primaries, and it was downplayed throughout all the networks! It was Huckabee this, Huckabee that; Huckabee here, Huckabee there. The Clinton News Network was beside itself trying to bury this news. Yet here it was historic, this win by Obama in Iowa. Do you realize what the black population in Iowa is? It’s like one or two percent. Two percent! Given that, the win of Obama is bigger than it seems. I mean, here the black guy won over the wife of ‘the first black president,’ who has an office in Harlem! Now how do they attack him? Everybody is wondering, ‘Are the Clintons going to go dirty now. Are they going to get dirty ads? What can they do? What can they do?’

It’s like I said last night with Obama: ‘If he goes on to win this, this campaign is going to be strictly on issues, as it should be.’ You can’t go after him ethically. You can’t go after him on character like you could Hillary and Bill.’ Ah, you gotta be very careful how you do it even if you think you can. This is one of the dilemmas that the Clintons face: ‘How do they go after the black guy?’ It’s just that simple. He’s well-educated. He’s well-spoken. He’s extremely nice. How in the world do you set about demonizing this guy, if you are the Clintons? (interruption) Yes, I am all those things except I’m not black and he is, and being black in the Democrat Party… We’re going to see if the pedal actually hits the metal. We’re going to see if the rubber hits the road, because the Democrat Party has built its current existence on many things — among them, that blacks in America have not been given a fair shake, that they’re discriminated against, that they need affirmative action, that they are being held down by conservatives and Republicans and racists and sexists and bigots. Let’s see now who it is that’s going to try to hold this guy down. The Republicans aren’t talking about this guy yet. They have their own problems. I want to see how Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton go after this guy. It’s going to be very, very difficult to do. Besides all that, this was a devastating loss for her: nine points last night. Nine points! A candidate of inevitability does not lose, and certainly not by nine points! Listen to this sound bite from Andrea Mitchell. Andrea Mitchell is one of Mrs. Clinton’s friends! This was on PMSNBC last night, post-cauci coverage. Chris Matthews was talking to Andrea Mitchell, who was at the Hillary Clinton celebration party, before it began. She was there at the Hillary Clinton hotel headquarters, and the question to her was, ‘Andrea, are they game now to win two here, to come in second?’

MITCHELL: This room was, until about five or six minutes ago, completely empty. This is a manufactured post-celebration. It really felt more like a funeral as people started sprawling in from upstairs where they had obviously been gathered. This is unlike anything that I’ve ever seen: a completely empty, uh, dirge-like event and clearly now they’ve got to go on to New Hampshire.

RUSH: ‘A completely empty, dirge-like,’ funereal event, ‘and now they have to go on to New Hampshire.’ It was bad last night. I don’t care about all of these expectations that they set for finishing third. Nobody anticipated going down by nine points. By the way, we didn’t see Andrea Mitchell for another two hours after this report. I think Jeff Zucker at NBC went over and cut the cable. (laughter) That was just the first — and I’d been watching all night — honest representation and portrayal of what it was like at Clinton campaign headquarters after this devastating defeat. Then, of course, Mrs. Clinton got out there and she started making her acceptance speech, and made it sound like they won. Everything is ‘we’ this, ‘we’ that. ‘We are going to going on!’ It was very, very slick, but it didn’t sell. It was just amazing. This is going to be… Now she’s up in some districts in New Hampshire, and, you know, Obama is vulnerable in some ways, basically on his inexperience and this sort of thing. But Mrs. Clinton hasn’t been able to be the one to capitalize on that. This morning on Good Morning America, ABC, Diane Sawyer spoke with George Stephanopoulos, and Sawyer said to Stephy, ‘Well, what does she do next?

STEPHANOPOULOS: It’s going to be very, very difficult for him. [sic] One of the arguments that Senator Clinton is going to try to make going into New Hampshire is that Barack Obama is not electable. He’s going to be able to point back to those last two numbers, the numbers among independent voters in Iowa — and again, they’re very, very important — in New Hampshire, and the fact that he brought young people into the system. He can say that that proves that he’s electable, that he’s the most electable candidate. He can bring new voters into the system. He can reach across party lines for Democrats — and that’s where the battle is going to be joined, in New Hampshire and beyond.

RUSH: Obama is really jamming it. By the way, did you hear Stephanopoulos? ‘It’s going to be very, very difficult for him,’ when asked what Hillary is going to do. A little faux pas perhaps? Obama was at a hangar today, maybe it was late last night. He said, ‘This feels good. This feels just like I imagined when I was talking to my kindergarten teacher,’ which is a slam. He’s killing Hillary, folks! He’s literally killing her. He’s just ramming it right back down her throat. Remember Hillary tried to say that he was lying about his ambition because he’d written a piece in kindergarten how badly he wanted to be president so he’s out there saying, ‘This feels really good. This feels like I imagined when I was talking to my kindergarten teacher.’ It was a cold, echoing airplane hangar where he made the statement. You look at the turnout in the state of Iowa last night, and one of the things that you might be able to conclude, just from Iowa, is that the Baby Boomers’ turn is over. You know, I hate to keep saying, ‘I told you so,’ but one of the things that I found interesting was that this was the Baby Boomers’ last chance; the anti-war left’s last chance to get their hands around the throat of this country and bend it, shape it, flake it, form it to whatever they wanted. But Obama won this thing by getting people who had never participated before: younger people who have a totally different set of values and political identity, and have no memory of whatever the nineties was, great or bad, with the Clintons.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The Boston Globe has a pretty good breakdown today of the demographics of the voters in Iowa last night, and it seemed that first-time caucus-goers were out in droves. However, the profile of these voters varied dramatically, this according to entrance polls conducted by the AP and the national election poll. Now, ‘The polls indicate Obama, the 45-year-old senator from Illinois, relied on young voters among the record number Democrats who participated in the caucuses — many of them self-described independents. By contrast, Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and ordained Baptist minister, found his support among evangelical Christian voters who hold some of his party’s more conservative views.’

Now, Huckabee only got 14% of the non-evangelical vote. Even more impressive on the other side of the aisle, Barack Obama won the women’s vote. I hate to keep telling you I told you so, but I’m watching last night, and the Drive-Bys are stunned when they report this data. They couldn’t believe that women did not turn to Clinton. Do you realize, over 70% of the people in Iowa on the Democrat side who caucused last night voted against Mrs. Clinton? They had two options to vote against Mrs. Clinton, the Breck Girl and Obama, and they availed themselves of both. It’s not just that she didn’t even get 30%, it’s not just that she came in third place, down by nine points, it’s that 70% of the state voted against her! This is profound. It is a huge story, and it’s being undersold and underreported today. The Drive-Bys are already salivating and panting — (panting) — about what the Clintons will do to rebound in New Hampshire.

Now, ‘Among Democrats, according to the entrance polls, age appeared to be the salient divide: 57 percent of young voters ages 17 and 29 chose Obama — five times as many as Clinton, who depended on the support of older, married women. … Clinton drew 45 percent of voters age 65 and older, nearly three times as many as Obama and more than twice as many as John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina. Still, Obama dominated Iowa’s college towns, including Johnson County, home to the University of Iowa. His dominance among the youngest Democratic voters indicate that Clinton’s gender-based appeals may have backfired among younger women.’ I don’t know if it was gender based or whatever backfired, she’s just not likable. Here’s the thing you gotta understand. Hillary went to Iowa. The more up close people see this woman, the more they reject her. When she doesn’t speak, her poll numbers stay pretty steady, maybe even go up. It’s when she starts opening up and speaking that her poll numbers traditionally have started to inch and creep down. She was in and all over this state, and the personal contact didn’t work. I maintain to you that the same thing happened with her husband, she started that tailspin when her husband got off the airplane, started making these three-hour speeches about himself. He does not end up helping in any way, shape, manner, or form.

Now, here’s the actual breakdown of voters. On the Democrat side, 57% male, 43% female. On the Republican side, 56% female, 44% Republican. By the way, everybody’s talking, ‘Whoa, it was a record Democrat turnout. Wow, wow.’ It was. And the Drive-Bys say, ‘This election is over, the election in November is over, why, look at this turnout, why, they’re far more energized.’ Republican turnout was a record last night, too, at least it was up over the last two cauci. You have to remember here, folks, Iowa is a liberal state, and so is New Hampshire. So to sit there and gauge Republican turnout versus Democrat turnout and project that to November, once again wishful thinking. Seventeen to 24 demographics, 7% Republican, 17% Democrat. Twenty-five to 29, 2% Republican, 5% Democrat. Thirty to 44, it was 14 to 16, Republican-Democrat. Forty-five to 59, 36 Republican and 28% Democrat. People that were older than 65, it was 30% Republican and 24% Democrat. In a race, you break it down that way, 99% of the Republicans were white, 94% of the Democrats were white, 3% were black. So it was interesting. Huckabee got only 14% of the non-evangelical vote.

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