RUSH: All right, folks, I will admit it, it’s all my fault. I caused this to happen last night, but it ain’t bad. We want a long, drawn-out fight between Hillary and Obama. It’s exactly what we want. Don’t be down in the dumps today, don’t be doom and gloom. Everybody got caught up at the end of the Clinton era thinking it was true, and it wasn’t, and I warned you about this all the way back to December 14th. Greetings and welcome, Rush Limbaugh back on, the middle of the week, Wednesday, at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. Great to be with you, folks. Telephone number is 800-282-2882, the e-mail address is ElRushbo@eibnet.com. A special welcome to those of you watching the program today on our website, RushLimbaugh.com, via the increasingly popular Dittocam.
Now, how is this my fault? It’s easy. The Drive-By Media ought to be so embarrassed that they ought not have the courage to show up today and start pontificating and predicting, but they are ignoring that and they’re making the same stupid type of predictions about Michigan that they made about Iowa and that they made about New Hampshire. The big loser last night was the Drive-By Media. The only thing is they haven’t conceded yet. But it was I, ladies and gentlemen, it was I will, El Rushbo, who begged Mrs. Clinton, who implored her to carry on, to not give up. When all these stories were out there that she’s going to get out of the race after one state and that her team was sending out résumés and abandoning her and that the Hollywood crowd was going to sign up for Obama, I begged her, I implored her to carry on, to not give up, and I think she took that to heart and she called out the flying monkeys to bus in some voters. Well, you know, the wicked witch, the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz? Here came droves of first-time voters in New Hampshire.
I want to know the numbers. How many people that voted in New Hampshire were first-time registered voters that registered yesterday? We had the story way, way back long, long time ago, it was November the 27th, about how you can vote in New Hampshire. And that is, you can go in from out of state, and all you have to do to get a ballot, about which they ran out of, I wonder why, on the Democrat side, all you have to do is go in and say, ‘Yeah, I’m thinking about moving to New Hampshire, I might be moving here,’ and so forth, and so you can vote. We have had this confirmed. Even the Clinton people all day yesterday thinking they were down in the dumps by five or ten points. Ha-ha-ha. But I think Mrs. Clinton was so overwhelmed by my advice and by my heartfelt plea to remain in this race and to not give up that she sort of cried. And look what happened? The tears worked. The tears worked, folks. I was up ’til two o’clock in the morning trying to sort all of this out. You look at the Republican polls, they were right on the money, within one percentage point of the outcome. The Democrat polls were way, way off.
Now, let me just go in order here of some thoughts that I’ve jotted down in real time that I want to share with you. In the first place, why all these headlines today about Hillary and McCain pulling upsets? They didn’t. This was what was going to happen up until three or four days ago when polling data shot through the roof on the other side. In fact, McCain in 2000 won New Hampshire by 16 percentage points. He ends up winning it by, what, five percentage points last night? This was not an upset. If you go back and look at what the pre-election polls from way, way back told us. I really do wonder about how many first-time voters registered from Vermont and Massachusetts yesterday. We had all kinds of stories on Monday of Hillary rallies Sunday and Monday that the parking lots at her venues had nothing but Massachusetts license plates all over them. But one scenario after another is out there, and every scenario is based on what happens in one state.
After Iowa, Hillary was finished — talking about the Drive-Bys here and their polling units — after Iowa, Hillary was finished, and after Iowa, Romney has to win New Hampshire. If Romney loses New Hampshire, he is done. Now they’re saying Romney has to win Michigan. I thought Romney was out if he lost New Hampshire? But now they’re saying Romney has to win Michigan. What if this goes to the convention, and he has a goodly chunk of delegates? It’s getting increasingly difficult to read this stuff. There are just too many people with too much space to fill on too many blogs, too many people on television with too much time to fill with endless parades of predictions that are baseless. And they have been dead wrong. And when they’re dead wrong, they ought to be embarrassed and unable to show themselves in public the next day, but not the case. They continue to show up and embarrass themselves even further. I don’t understand these people. I really don’t. You have a very close contest. You have battles in state after state. What is the goal here? The goal here is amassing enough delegates in each of these primaries to be able to secure a victory at your party convention. If Romney doesn’t win in Michigan, he’s done? They said Romney would be done if he lost New Hampshire. Maybe, maybe not. But how can anybody say so at the beginning of the process? Which this is.
Romney, by the way, you want to hear the delegate count after two states? On the Republican side, Mitt Romney, 24 delegates because he won Wyoming, which has as many delegates as New Hampshire. In number two the delegate race is Huckabee at 18, and number three is McCain, at ten, McCain, because of the margin of his victory in New Hampshire. So Romney, after three states, leads in delegates. Now, I know this is all going to change, but you can’t come up and say, ‘Well, if he loses New Hampshire, he’s out. If he loses Michigan, he’s done.’ This is mindless! It’s irresponsible! It’s not even based in any kind of thought. It’s just a bunch of individuals predicting things on one particular event after one particular event. This is not a momentum election, folks, this is important to understand. This is not a momentum election, because nobody has any momentum right now. The momentum shifts, we’ve had two states, we’ve had two sets of winners in both states. Where’s the momentum? It’s impossible to say that there is any momentum.
I do believe that New Hampshire women were terribly upset about the way Hillary was being treated. I think her tears worked. I think in the debate when this guy from WMUR-TV asked her what she thought about the fact that so many people dislike her, she said, ‘It hurts my feelings.’ I think it resonates with women. I think there’s a whole dynamic here with women that we are missing in this, and it’s not about women supporting chicks, it’s not about women supporting other women, that’s not what it is. I will explain this in detail as the program unfolds. I also think one of the other things that happened as I looked at some of the demographics here, it appears that because of all the pre-election polling that showed Obama had it in the bag, a bunch of renegade New Hampshire liberal independents abandoned Obama, decided to vote for McCain, and that took away some votes from Obama, and this is partly the result, or the effect, of all of these pre-election polls.
Now, as bad — and I’ve been critical here today — as bad as the Drive-Bys can be, it is really rare for them to be off by double digits like they were on the Democrat side. They’re wrong a lot, but in these polls it was double digits. I think we’re seeing some old-fashioned politics here à la the Kennedys and the Daleys out of Illinois. You got your walking-around folded money spread around, tour buses filled up, brought across state lines, dead people voting, prisoners voting, people voting two, three times. Who knows. Somebody’s got to find this out because right now these pollsters’ reputations are not worth the dirt that you would dig up to bury the polling. They are going to have to find out what happened here. It’s incumbent upon them to do so. I think it’s kind of fascinating. And now let’s go back to me, December 14th, this is what I said on this program.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Until I see the house fall on her — for those of you in Rio Linda, that’s a reference to the Wizard of Oz, when the house finally fell on a bad witch — until I see the house fall on her and those legs curl up underneath the house and the body in the casket, she is not dead, she is not finished. Don’t forget, folks, there’s an old soap opera rule, and she’s a soap opera figure along with her husband, and that is, ’til you actually see the body, the person’s not dead. And in soap operas, villains don’t die, villains don’t get written out. Good guys get written out. The Clintons are a soap opera.
RUSH: Yes, my friends, I just want you to remember this. Even on Monday I was begging her not to get out. So in this era where everybody jumps on the bandwagon, somebody goes out and says, ‘Oh, Hillary’s getting out of the race, ooh, she’s going to lose by five-to-ten points, ooh,’ and everybody gets on that bandwagon and starts writing obituaries, it is I, El Rushbo, who remained the lone outpost of common sense and levelheadedness and perspective right here behind the Golden EIB Microphone.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me tell you what this outcome means. I’m sticking on the Democrat side here for now. There is chaos on the Democrat side, and I cannot emphasize this enough. The Drive-Bys are creating an impression here, as they always do, that is not accurate. The impression is that the Democrats are basking in glory even on the Obama side because they’re smoking. Turnout is going crazy, far greater than the Republican turnout is. People are more energized to vote for a Democrat. They’re all excited. This outcome, both in Iowa and in New Hampshire, is less about what Democrats are for than what they are scared they believe we can exploit. They are scared to death, folks, of having either a black as a nominee or a woman as the nominee, because they think… I’m not telling you they’re right, I’m telling you what they think. You know what they think of conservatives and Republicans: racists, sexists, bigots, and homophobes — and Democrats never think that elections are about issues. They think it’s about marketing and packaging and tricks. So their big fear here is that Republicans (the racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes) are going to be able to either use veiled racism against Obama if he’s the nominee, or veiled sexism if Hillary is the nominee. When, in fact, as we all know, they are the closet racists and sexists.
You check out what Bill Clinton and Hillary have been saying about Obama, and you tell me if any Republican could get away with it. They’ve been insulting his race; they’ve been insulting his experience. They’ve been doing any number of things to tear him down that if any Republican had said, it would be front-page headlines on how America still hasn’t moved forward. ‘We’re moving back to slavery days, and isn’t it terrible?’ There’d be a bunch of hand-wringing by the New York Times, Washington Post, and all of the networks. But you check out what they were saying in code language in rural Iowa about Obama. The bottom line is: They are about nothing. They’re just worried about what we can most easily beat, a woman or a black. That’s where they have their largest concerns here. I’m telling you, don’t doubt me on this. You think that they’re riding and sitting really pretty and believing that they’ve got it in the bag because the first black or the first woman is going to be on the ballot. Their fear is based on BS, but it’s based on the fact that we win elections by being racists, and sexists, and bigots, and cheating and fraud. That’s what their concern is here. They are in chaos over how to proceed here.
Remember, this is not about what they are for when it comes to Obama or Hillary. You’re getting lofty speeches that carry themes of change and all these specious, undefinable things. Don’t doubt me on this, folks. Now, having said that, do not estimate the female attraction here. Women have always played a critical demographic in every modern election. Sometimes it’s overestimated and overemphasized when the votes are all in. No conservative woman is going to be for Hillary. But by virtue of arithmetic there are more women than men, and women are more emotional in general. But the biggest thing for women is not that Hillary is a woman herself. It’s the comeback thing. Women love validation — and I’m exempting you conservative women here because you conservative women are oriented toward ideas. So don’t think I’m lumping all women here together in a monolithic way. But when you get outside of conservative, thoughtful, engaged women — the women that have been affected by Oprah. You know, it was back in the year 2000, maybe before that, that I, El Rushbo created the term the Oprahfication of America, and basically what does Oprah do? She cries! Among other things, Oprah cries. Oprah has made all women watch her and believe what she says, fall into this victim status — and when you’re a victim, you’re an underdog, and Mrs. Clinton became the victim.
These guys out there, ‘Iron my shirt!’ I’m telling you that was staged, and I’m telling you it worked. That’s the kind of thing that will infuriate women. It’ll just infuriate ’em, and these guys parade around, and Mrs. Clinton, of course, looked like she knew it was coming and had this comment about ‘sexism rearing its head,’ da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da. So the biggest thing for women is not that she is a woman but the comeback thing. Women love validation. They love vindication. They love revenge! Do you know what else they like? Now, I’m not speaking of women in general here. I’m talking about the women who — because of the nature of their existence, the way they live, who they are — are impacted by Oprahfication and other such things. They love, ‘Screw you, mister!’ especially if ‘mister’ — if the guy — is responsible for making the woman the victim. So men are making Hillary cry. Men are parading signs around that say ‘Iron my shirt!’ which is a rip-off, by the way. That’s another thing that I think is my fault, because at the Rush to Excellence Tours, I open with a halfway true story that evolves into a joke about Mrs. Clinton, who wants to be a ‘real woman’ in my presence and I tell her how to do it.
That got stolen as well. But more than the tears, folks, or at least equally, was the ‘That hurts my feelings in the debate.’ That’s (whining impression), ‘You know, nobody wants to get their feelings hurt. It’s unfair for Mrs. Clinton to be asked that question and have her feelings hurt,’ and she sounded like her feelings were hurt. She got all girlie and so forth. I’m telling you, it was magnetic to the kind of women who are going to think that Hillary Clinton is being wronged and they want to stand up and help her get even. Also, don’t discount the fact that Clinton was practically on his knees out there (no pun intended) for his wife. Plus, the polling was off. The Wilder Effect. Do you know what the Wilder Effect is? Sometimes called the Bradley Effect; sometimes called the Dinkins Effect, but basically it is that people in a poll will tell a pollster, ‘I’m supporting the black guy,’ so the pollster won’t think they’re racist. But when they get in the privacy of the voting booth, they have no intention of voting for the black guy. They vote for the white guy.
Now, Iowa could have been the reverse Wilder Effect, because in Iowa you not only have the pollsters asking you who you’re going to vote for, and say, ‘I’m going to vote for Obama. I’m going to caucus for Obama.’ In Iowa when you caucus, you caucus with your friends watching you. So, ‘Yeah, I’m for Obama,’ because people don’t want to be thought of as racist, especially liberal Democrats and these kind of people that get all concerned about political correctness. So the Wilder Effect might have had an effect on the polling. There’s any number of things at work here. Ladies and gentlemen, but don’t forget also that these independents leaving Obama to vote for McCain because they thought that Obama had it in the bag — and, of course, with the Clintons running around talking about dropping staff and maybe getting out of the race. You know this stuff came from their camp. It creates the impression in the minds of New Hampshire independents, ‘Ah, even they think it’s over. Okay, we’ll I’m going to have some fun and go vote for McCain.’ So you shifted artificially in favor of McCain, away from Obama. There were any number of things going on here; none of it seen by the Drive-Bys.