RUSH: Now, let me give you an example, ladies and gentlemen, of… creating sympathy for Mrs. Clinton among women. The tears worked, whether they were fake, whether they were real, they worked. Whether she was acting or not when she said that it hurt her feelings to be asked a question about people disliking her, why so many people dislike her and so forth, when men are perceived to be behind this, women will rally, it doesn’t matter. I’ll give you an illustration of how I, on this program, could create the same effect that I think happened in Iowa. Let us play a sound bite from Mrs. Clinton last night in her acceptance speech in New Hampshire.
HILLARY: I come tonight with a very, very full heart. And I want especially to thank New Hampshire. Over the last week, I listened to you, and, in the process, I found my own voice.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Okay, now, if we stop it right there, which we did, okay, Mrs. Clinton found her own voice. Well, I could say, Mrs. Clinton, we found your voice, too, in our archives.
HILLARY (screeching): I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, ‘WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE WITH ANY ADMINISTRATION!’
RUSH: Now, in doing that, you know, we sit here and we laugh about it, but I’ll guarantee you, some women out there just get frosted, that sexist pig Limbaugh making fun of Hillary. She has achieved a victim status again, she’s achieved the status of a sympathetic figure, and it is among people who have been affected by the Oprah Winfrey phenomenon. You don’t have to be sexist for a bunch of wound-tight women to think you are. You don’t have to be. It’s not that I play her words, it’s that I basically am calling her a liar. I played a tape last night, she says, ‘I found my voice.’ Oh, yeah, we have, too, bam. And I play this thing, ‘You didn’t have to do that, that’s old, that’s old, you’re just making fun of her. You’re just trying to hurt her.’ I know what the reactions are out there. I’m telling you, this was fundamental of what happened in Iowa, in addition to the fraud, the potential fraud, the possible fraud. The pollsters are going to have to find out about that. They really are. Their credibility is on the line here, as is everybody in the Drive-By Media who said this was over. Do you realize how few of them are getting this right? Do you realize how few of them are getting anywhere close to being right about this, the way they are characterizing these primaries, the whole contest, the way they’re mischaracterizing, misreporting, all of the results? Folks, it’s an embarrassment.
This goes beyond journalistic malpractice. This is as though these people have never done it before. You could have gone out and hired a bunch of amateurs who watch television and think they can do it just as well, put them on these shows to analyze what happened, and it would be just as good as what we’re getting. We’ve got a sound bite of me back in 2000, June 30th, I don’t want to play this, because I listened to it and this is when I was losing my hearing and my voice is all wacky on this, but I want to read you a transcript of what I said on this program June 30th, 2000.
‘This comes under the umbrella of Rush knows women, and I do, I know what makes ’em tick. I know why they do various things they do, I mean, well, no more than anybody else does. I mean I know women as much as possible, which is not really very much, but I got it figured out I think as much as anybody can, let’s put it that way. And the question’s been raised on this program a number of times since I’ve been hosting it, ‘Rush, why is Oprah so popular? What is it about that show?’ If you’ve ever watched it, she cries all the time. I mean the biggest audience is women, the fastest way to a woman’s heart is cry, the emotional, it’s a magnet.’ That’s what I said back in June of 2000. And here is Hillary crying Monday morning in Portsmouth.
HILLARY: It’s not easy. It’s not easy. And I couldn’t do it if I just didn’t, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I have so many opportunities for this country. I just don’t want to see us fall backwards. No.
RUSH: Now, the engaged, informed thinker would have one early reaction to this, and it’s the reaction that I had when I first heard it. It’s not the tears. My reaction is, you have so many opportunities for this country? She said, ‘I have so many opportunities for this country?’ Wouldn’t it be better to say we, as Americans, have so many opportunities in this country? A lot of people were too blinded by the tears and the emotional output to even hear what she was saying. Those that did hear what she was saying for the first time, they think, heard her say, ‘I want this for you, not me. I want it for you.’ And, of course, if you’ve got a dumbed-down electorate on the Democrat side that will buy into all this emotion stuff coupled with a little misty eyes, then you’ve got something here that’s a factor whether we like it or not. On Monday, after hearing this, this is what I said as we go back to our own archives.
RUSH ARCHIVE: This is the sympathy play. This is the gender card again. I’m going to tell you exactly what this is. This is the latest version of invading my space. This was a reenactment of tears with the Rick Lazio moment, ladies and gentlemen. Should a man get away with bringing Mrs. Clinton to tears? Should a man, be it me, be it Obama, should a man get away with bringing Mrs. Clinton to tears? She says, ‘I have so many opportunities for this country.’ I have? How about we have so many opportunities together, Mrs. Clinton, rather than I have so many — I this, and I that. Emotional blackmail. This is calculated, make no mistake about it, folks. This is not spontaneous, because nothing with the Clintons is coincidence.
RUSH: Doesn’t matter, on the left, and with women who are inclined in this matter. I’m telling you, do not underestimate the undergirding, if you will, of this. It is the ‘screw you, mister,’ aspect, the ‘screw you, pal,’ you know, angry women thinking that men are holding them down, keeping ’em back, and now they’re trying to with Hillary and making her cry, and Hillary came back. And that’s worth a reward. She could only do this one time. She can’t get away with this again and again and again. This was a one-time ploy. But there will be other one-time ploys as we head on. The bottom line, folks, before we go to the break and come back with your phone calls is nothing’s over, we just started. We’ve got two states. The next time you hear — I don’t care if it’s one of our guys in the punditry or one of the other guys — next time you hear them say this candidate is out, if he doesn’t win New Hampshire or Iowa, Michigan, blow it out. Ignore it. Nobody knows what’s going to happen.
Nobody can read and predict and tell the future. And these people, these so-called wise men and ladies on television have no clue, either. They’ve just got too much time to fill, they got too much time trying to appear to be the smartest people in the room, and the irony of that is they end up all parroting each other, because once somebody does go out on a limb, the others are afraid not to go out on a limb in case that person is right, so they all go out on a limb, and it falls out because of all the weight of their inaccuracy. Just chill. Just cool out, let things play out as they do, and, by all means, understand that politically we want a long, drawn-out fight between Hillary and Obama. That is to our benefit.
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RUSH: Susie in Spokane, Washington, you’re up first today. Nice to have you here.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I have to tell you, first of all, I’m really almost embarrassed to call you to tell you what I’m going to tell you, but I want to preface it by saying: I’ve been a businesswoman, hard charging for 40 years, a Republican. I dislike Oprah immensely. When I listened to Hillary in tears the other night, I — I felt a touch of sympathy, and I had to slap myself!
RUSH: Yeah, and what caused the sympathy? Was it her tears?
CALLER: Well, no, because, you know what? I’ve been there. I have been in that position, as a woman, where I’ve done everything I thought I should do, and it looked like I wasn’t going to make it. It’s a feminine thing.
RUSH: Because you start out with the deck stacked against you anyway, right?
CALLER: Yeah!
RUSH: Yeah, because you start out with it stacked against you — in your mind.
CALLER: Oh, yeah.
RUSH: In your mind.
CALLER: You’re right
RUSH: In your mind, you start out with the deck stacked against you.
CALLER: I hope I don’t lose you. My battery is getting low on this phone, but anyway I just wanted you to know that. People need to know that women, we do great stuff but we still have that —
RUSH: Sadly, I know this.
CALLER: I know you do.
RUSH: Because of firsthand experience. (laughing)
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: I know this stuff.
CALLER: So does my husband, bless his heart.
RUSH: Well, it is what it is. So here we have even a conservative woman in Spokane who has a little lump in her throat here. (interruption) Now, Mr. Snerdley, you’re going to have to change your approach on this. He’s in there shouting at me, ‘Don’t you understand how pathetic it is?’ Right now I’m not going to characterize it. I’m just trying to tell you what is, because everywhere else in the media is not getting this, and it is crucial to understand how to go forward here and understand what we’re dealing with! This is not women supporting women because of a monolithic support for gender. This is women, particularly on the liberal side — but here you had Susie who’s a conservative, who’s been there — saying the odds are stacked against them. We’re talking about attitudes here. It’s a woman thing, Snerdley, and you, of all people, should know this. You’re the expert, you claim. You should know this. Somebody made her cry — and there’s not another woman in the race, and you got a bunch of guys running around saying, ‘Iron my shirt!’ People… Look, I’m telling you, it’s only on the conservative side you’re going to find women that are going to be able to laugh at things like this and not take it personally. I’m just trying to help people to understand here, because what’s happening in the attempts by the Drive-Bys to explain what happens in New Hampshire is so off the path; they are all so wrong. I’m simply sharing my intelligence guided by experience, coupled with my wisdom. You want to know something else? When all is said and done, the Democrat machine candidate wins. It wasn’t Bill Bradley in 2000, it wasn’t Howard Dean in ’04, and it ain’t going to be Obama in ’08.
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RUSH: It’s a good thing that I am confident. It’s a good thing that I am grounded. I just got an earful from Snerdley. He thinks I’m so wrong on all this. I’m into my 20th year. I’m not wrong. I’m always shown to be right. Yet it is when I come up with explanations for things which are such wide variance with the conventional wisdom, it’s such a trap. Everybody gets caught up in the old CW, and I don’t. In fact, I look for the opposite when I see the CW form, and when I come up with my explanation that’s opposite the CW, even people who have known me for 20-plus years and know full well I’m going to end up being right, still get in my face and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about here. (sigh) So I go back to Snerdley’s office, and he says, ‘I don’t know. I just don’t understand. I can’t say I understand how you’re saying this. The woman is 60 years old, and all of a sudden I saw Ann Lewis,’ and, by the way, Ann Lewis, ladies and gentlemen (Barney Frank’s sister), is the chairman of what Monica Crowley calls the Clinton Ladies Intervention Team, and Ann Lewis was on television last night, and Snerdley was watching, and she said Hillary had ‘a very human moment.’
Snerdley thinks, ‘You’re falling for this, Rush. You’re falling for their spin!’
I said, ‘No, I didn’t hear Ann Lewis say that. I don’t need to hear Ann Lewis say anything to analyze any of this.’
‘But the woman is 60 years old.’ Snerdley is shouting at me and pounding his desk. ‘She’s 60 years old. A human moment? Who’s falling for this?’
I said, ‘Look, when you move from Nurse Ratched to human in ten seconds, that is an achievement,’ and it is!
When everybody’s impression of you is this cold, calculating, inhuman, unfeeling little automaton, and all of a sudden you get human, that’s big; and then the quasi-tears and so forth? Folks, I’m telling you, this is a big deal. Now, what’s she going to do next? She can’t do this again. She can’t do the crocodile tears. She can’t go out and say her feelings are hurt. These are one-time things. But are there other opportunities that she might have to bond with woman in the future? Yes. Let me offer one, and it’s something I think a lot of men wouldn’t understand, but I, ladies and gentlemen (laughing). The things I do understand about women (sigh), I’d trade for other things to understand, but I understand what I understand, and I’m telling you, I won’t be surprised — it’s not going to be soon; it will be at the next moment of crisis — when Mrs. Clinton shows up to make a speech, and there’s a blemish, a pimple, zit, whatever you want to call it, prominent on her face.
We’ll all look at it and say, ‘Whoa! What is this? Was the makeup bad?’ No. The message will be to women: ‘The hormones are out of control, and that’s due to stress, and that Mrs. Clinton is courageous and brave enough to show up in public and allow this imperfection to be seen,’ and they will understand the hormones raging. It’s going to be stuff like this. Once they do something that works, it’s like anybody else: You keep going back to it in ways that are different, but the same. (interruption) I don’t think she can cry anymore. I don’t think she will, not unless something happens. There would be no other natural reaction other than to cry. (interruption) Well, like… (interruption) No. Like, if somebody asked her in a debate down the road, ‘By the way, we understand Bill was running around with Belinda Stronach up in Canada last night,’ I don’t think that would make her cry. Well, you don’t have any proof of Belinda Stronach. Belinda Stronach is a rumored name. I don’t know. It was a long time ago. But pick any named or unnamed. I don’t think that would cause tears. Well, in Hillary it might. Folks, you’re going to have to just sit tight and let this stuff unfold before your very eyes and understand that nothing that happens with these people is coincidence.
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RUSH: I mentioned before the break of the last hour that Mrs. Clinton’s tears, the choked-up moment, was a little calculated — and I believe this, using intelligence guided by experience. Nothing that happens with the Clintons is coincidence. But the night before the tearful moment, she appeared on Access Hollywood — also part of the new strategy. She’s appeared on Fox twice. She’s sitting down doing interviews with people she used to give no time to whatsoever, and she was on Access Hollywood with the info babe Maria Menounos, and Menounos said, ‘You’re not made of steel, are you? You have feelings.’ Now, remember: This is the night before the choked-up moment.
MRS. CLINTON: It’s that difficult position that a woman candidate is in, because if you get too emotional, that undercuts you. A man can cry. We know that. Lots of our leaders have cried, but, you know, a woman, that’s a different kind of dynamic. You know, I may get a little passionate and carried away from time to time, and maybe somebody says, ‘Well, you know, women shouldn’t do that.’ Well, I disagree with that. It may take some getting used to because we haven’t had a woman president, but, um, I’m confident that people are going to say, you know, ‘Wait a minute. I want a fighter in the White House.’
RUSH: And the next day, after having set the stage the night before and sort of giving away little hints here at the future, she has the choked-up moment. Been thinking about it. She was thinking about it before she did it. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was rehearsed for this, or she had rehearsed.
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RUSH: First audio sound bites. Mrs. Clinton today was on the Today Show with Meredith Vieira, who asked her this question: ‘On Monday, you were asked how you get up in the morning and your eyes began to mist over when you talked about that. You came close to tears. Do you think that that affected the voters, that that made a difference, that moment?’
HILLARY: Well, I think that the whole sequence of events starting from the debates through the last voter I talked to about 5:30 on Tuesday night, because, you’re right, there was a feeling on the part of a lot of voters in New Hampshire that they were getting to know me. I mean, that’s what the New Hampshire primary process is about. There is just this extraordinary feeling that I had, in the incident you refer to where, you know, we were all in it together. I was doing my part to try to tell people what I wanted our country to be like, and when the woman said to me, ‘Well, how do you do that?’ I really felt touched by that, and I think we did connect at a very, you know, personal level.
RUSH: She has a lot of detailed memory of this, to be able to explain a spontaneous moment, doesn’t she? Let’s move on to audio sound bites, something else I’m telling you, this had an impact, it’s hard to measure how much, but it no question did, and I think this was staged, in Salem, New Hampshire, on Monday night. This is the protest with the male protester there running around with a sign that said, ‘Iron my shirt,’ and shouting the same thing.
HILLARY: People think you bring about change by —
UNIDENTIFIED MALE PROTESTER: Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt!
HILLARY: Can we turn the lights on? It’s awfully dark here for everybody.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE PROTESTER: Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt!
HILLARY: Ohhh, the remnants of sexism, alive and well. (cheering)
RUSH: And, of course, there were a lot of cheers from the audience there, ladies and gentlemen. Everybody plagiarizes me; everybody takes my ideas. Snerdley, you haven’t heard a Rush to Excellence Tour show in a long time, but I always open it up with a story of when I met Mrs. Clinton. It’s a true story, but then I delve into a joke off of the true story, and I did this in Sacramento on September 21st, and after telling the true element of the story, we pick up with the joke element.
RUSH ARCHIVE: I decided to leave and make my way toward the elevators, because I’d been there a long time, and as I got in the elevator, the door is about to close, Mrs. Clinton gets in it. She gets in the elevator, she hits the stop button. She says, ‘I never thought that I would meet you, especially in a place like this.’ She said, ‘Do you know how long it’s been since I have felt like a real woman?’ (laughter) Well, to myself, I’m thinking, yeah, but didn’t want to say so. So she said, ‘Would you make me feel like a real woman?’ I said, ‘I’d be honored.’ So I started taking off my clothes and I got down to my underwear and I stopped, and I just piled the clothes on the floor of the elevator, I said, ‘Mrs. Clinton, if you want to feel like a real woman, fold ’em.’
RUSH: So these guys running around at her press appearance, her rally, saying, ‘Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt!’ folks, all this is my fault, I’m telling you, every aspect of this is my fault, on purpose. I don’t want her out of the race. I don’t want her defeated in the primaries. I want her to stay in this. I want her and Obama to have a protracted fight on this. I want it to go as long as possible. I don’t know how long that’s going to be. But we need that to happen.
Now back to the phones. Allison in Charleston, South Carolina, I’m glad you called, and welcome to the program.
CALLER: Thank you. I want to start off by thanking you too, for singling out conservative women, of which I am one. I did not buy her act one bit, but, I am a little embarrassed to admit on the radio that I am also an Oprah lover. I TiVo Oprah every day and I watch the show every day.
RUSH: Every day.
CALLER: Every day.
RUSH: Every day.
CALLER: Yes. I would disagree a little bit. I don’t think Oprah actually cries that much on her show, but she certainly causes everybody else in the audience and everybody watching it to cry.
RUSH: All right, six of one, half dozen of the other. She’s dropped her share of tears on the floor.
CALLER: Yes. But I felt not one iota of sympathy for Hillary Clinton when she cried because, I agree with you, I think it was calculated, it was meant to cause a reaction, and it worked.
RUSH: It did amongst most of the others of the Oprah audience and I think liberal women in general who have an us vs. them attitude when it comes to men, and the men made her do this, the men made her cry, and they love women’s vindication, they love women validation, they love women getting even, they love the ‘screw you, mister’ aspect.
CALLER: Well, it’s not only that. I think The Oprah audience, and up until the time that she started backing Barack Obama, I never felt like she was preaching it to me so I was okay with it. I’m a little worried about this now, and I’m having to rethink of whether I’m going to TiVo it every day, but I think she thinks she can save the world not using government, and I think that is something women definitely agree with. But now that she’s backing Barack Obama, coming to my state with him, I don’t know, I had to throw out my Dixie Chick three CDs; I may have to stop watching her, too.
RUSH: If you like the show, you’re smart enough to watch the show and not be affected by all this extraneous stuff she’s doing unless it genuinely makes you mad.
CALLER: Well, what makes me mad is that other women I don’t know as well, my good friends pretty much are with me and they would never vote for Hillary Clinton just because she’s a woman, but people I don’t know as well or who aren’t as tuned in will start asking me because we’ve got our primary coming up, ‘You know, who are you thinking about voting for?’ and I start talking about Huckabee and Romney and they look at me like I’m crazy, ‘What do you mean, it’s only between Clinton and Barack Obama.’ That’s what bothers me.
RUSH: Wait a second. These are your Republican friends?
CALLER: These are women in general, back to the women, how right I think you are —
RUSH: Wait a minute, South Carolina is not open, right, independents can’t cross over — you can’t vote for the Democrats in South Carolina, can you?
CALLER: No. But I’m talking about more general women that I see in the workplace that I don’t really know their political affiliation.
RUSH: Oh, okay.
CALLER: And it’s a scary thing to me that they automatically assume because I’m a woman that I’m, number one, going to vote in the Democratic primary, and number two, that I’m going to be choosing between those two candidates.
RUSH: See, that’s my whole point, the kind of women that you’re talking about, that’s the way they look at things. By the way, Allison, thanks. Allison, one of my all-time, top-ten favorite female names, by the way. Love that name, Allison. But nevertheless, one thing that some people are concerned about, I of course am not yet concerned about, but the conventional wisdom is out there saying, ‘You see all the energy on the Democrat side? See all these Democrats can’t wait to get out there and vote? Where is the similar energy on the Republican side?’ And of course everyone is, ‘Whoa, we’re in big trouble out there, Rush, we’re in big, big trouble, those Democrats really care, they are so fired up they ran out of ballots in New Hampshire.’ Yeah, in an election where the Clintons are involved. Ha-ha-ha. Where you can bus people in from neighboring states and all you have to do is say, ‘Yeah, I plan to live there someday.’ Ha-ha. Ran out of ballots.
Folks, it’s just too early and too soon in this process to start creating all this self-induced suffering, which is based on telling yourself stories about the future with outcomes you cannot possibly know. I know it’s tough to avoid the conventional wisdom, it’s tough to avoid getting caught up in the way the Drive-Bys and their polling units are handling this, but you have to get a grip. If you’re going to watch it, you have to constantly remind yourself to doubt everything. The evidence is clear. The smart thing to do is doubt everything they’re telling you.
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RUSH: Back to this ‘iron my shirt’ business. Why not? Why not have the government iron our shirts? I mean, Hillary planned to do everything else for us: universal health care, universal pre-K, have a baby and get five grand, she tabled that, open a savings account, get $1,000, free babysitting in Iowa so you can vote for her. She’s going to take all the profits from evil Big Oil and give those profits to the government, Christmas presents under the tree are government programs. She’s got so many plans for us, why not universal laundry?