Obama Battles Both Clintons

RUSH: We go back to the phones now and John in Jacksonville. Thanks much for waiting. I appreciate it, sir.

CALLER: Okay, sir. How you doing today?

RUSH: Just fine, thank you.

CALLER: Yes, I was watching Good Morning America, and they had Obama on, and he was actually trying to defend himself against all these Clinton attacks. For some reason, the news media people can’t figure out what he’s doing. All he’s doing is running interference for Hillary Clinton to win Super Tuesday coming up. I don’t know why they can’t figure that out.

RUSH: Obama is running interference for —

CALLER: No, no, no, Bill Clinton is against Obama. Obama is trying to defend himself against the Clinton —

RUSH: Well, okay. We’ve got some sound bites from this. I’m going to use your call out there, John, to get into these sound bites. Now, I said, listening last week, I made the point that Obama is actually being ganged up on. It’s two against one out there. You got an ex-president and a sitting senator and they’re ganging up on the guy, and they’re telling lies about him. In fact, it was Monday, January 14th, let’s go back to the audio sound bite. Well, I don’t want to hear this because this is when my voice was good. This is going to make me jealous of myself. Well, let’s play it.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Have you noticed it’s Obama versus the Clintons, two against one. Obama campaigning against both of the Clintons. I wonder how well Mrs. Clinton would hold up if the shoe was on the other foot. That is, if she had to run against an ex-president and a senator. I think she’d cry and complain about the unfairness.

RUSH: Okay, so this morning on Good Morning America, actually taped yesterday, cohost Robin Roberts interviewing Obama, she said, ‘Do you feel at times you’re taking on two candidates at once?’

OBAMA: Oh, you know, there’s no doubt that, you know, having President Clinton on the trail and attacking — spending most of his time attacking me could be a distraction during the course of the campaign. But anybody who’s heard my wife Michelle on the stump knows that she’s an incredible asset. So I feel like it balances out.

RUSH: And then Robin Roberts said, ‘In a Newsweek article that’s coming out this week, prominent Democrats are saying what he’s doing is an inappropriate role for a former president to take such an aggressive role. Do you think it is inappropriate the role he has taken?”

OBAMA: I completely understand him wanting to promote his wife’s candidacy, and Michelle is out there doing the same thing on my behalf. I do think that there should be some certain — there should be some standards of honesty in any political discourse. That’s part of the change I want to bring about. If you have something that just directly contradicts the facts and it’s coming from a former president, I think that’s a problem because people presume that a former president is going to have more credibility, and I think there’s certain responsibilities that are carried with that.

ROBERTS: Anything else that you want to set the record straight that he said one thing about you and you’re now saying it’s false?

OBAMA: President Clinton went in front of a large group and said that I had claimed that only Republicans had had any good ideas since 1980, and then he added, ‘I am not making this up.’ He was making it up, and completely mischaracterizing my statement.

RUSH: Clinton’s not going to go away; he’s not going to shut up. That’s what they do. (doing Clinton impression) ‘Yeah, you’re right about that Limbaugh. I lie and I lie about everybody else because they believe what I say.’ I can’t do Clinton because I need to breath diaphragmatically. I can do McCain. (doing McCain impression) ‘Yeah, do me. I need the attention.’ Fine. David Plouffe, one of Obama’s guys. ‘In a sufficient succinct statement amended to a released quotation from his boss Obama said the Obama campaign was investigating more than 200 reports of irregularities in Nevada. We currently have reports of over 200 separate incidents of trouble at caucus sites including doors being closed over 30 minutes early, registration forms running out so people were turned away, ID being requested and checked in a nonuniform fashion, this in addition to the Clinton campaign’s efforts to confuse voters and call into question the at-large caucus sites.’ Anyway, it’s breaking out all over the place between Obama and the Clintons, and I think, to Obama’s credit, he doesn’t sound like he’s whining about it, and he seems to be fending it off. I think he’s just trying to get the impression out to people that this is what’s happening. Now, Clinton himself claims to have seen voter intimidation while Chelsea was standing by.

CLINTON: Yesterday, when Chelsea and I were going through one of the hotels here and someone was, going behind us, saying ‘if you vote for Hillary, we are going to give you a job assignment that keeps you from going to the caucus.’ And I haven’t seen tactics like that in decades.

RUSH: Come on, haven’t seen — you authored tactics like that last week! Haven’t seen tactics like this in America, what did he say, in decades? Yeah, and that’s if it really happened in the first place. After all, it is Clinton saying he saw it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m just trying to visualize here somebody walking behind two Clintons, somebody walking behind Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton would say out loud that your job is endangered if you vote for Hillary Clinton. I’m just having trouble visualizing this, here’s Clinton walking through — what strip club was he in? I understand he’d get the stripper vote sort of wrapped up for Hillary. So here’s Clinton, he’s walking through the casino, wherever he’s walking through, the caucus, some idiot standing right behind him is going to say in a loud enough voice, ‘Hey, your job at the union, you vote for Hillary and your job’s in danger,’ somebody going to say that with Clinton right there? I just don’t buy it, folks. I just don’t buy it. And, by the way, speaking of Clinton, here’s something else. Mr. Obama, we like you here at the EIB Network, and we want to help you. Here’s something you might raise. This is a question, next time you do an interview, and you might say it exactly this way, or close to it: ‘If the former president, Bill Clinton, cannot control himself during the course of a campaign, imagine how out of control he’s going to be back in the White House?’ I’m not talking about the sexual stuff, but the setting of policy and interfering with governing generally.

Let’s say that Hillary proposes her massive economic plan, discussed here in the New York Times: ‘For Clinton, Government as Economic Prod.’ The whole basis of her economic plan, income inequality and get-even-with-’em-ism, and here’s what she said. ‘I want to get back to the appropriate balance of power between government and the market.’ The appropriate balance of power between the government and the market? You know what that means. So, Hillary gets elected and she’s trying to implement this massive economic plan, which is going to freeze foreclosures for 90 days; she’s going to freeze interest rates for 90 days, and let’s add in, she’s going to freeze stock prices for 90 days. If she can freeze foreclosures and freeze interest rates, why not stop the stock market spindle? I mean, it’s heading down, why not just put a floor on it, say no stock’s going to go below X price. ‘Well, Rush, she can’t do that.’ Well, why can she suspend interest rates for 90 days, or foreclosures. So let’s say she implements the plan, and some people up on Capitol Hill don’t like it, is Bill Clinton going to be running around all over the place? Yes, trashing the people.

Now, the truth may be that it could backfire. The Democrats really want Bill back in the White House, Hillary’s just the vehicle, the transition, the driving board, the what have you. Regardless, he’ll be back in the White House, but he’s not going to be allowed to do anything officially. We just do the best we can, folks.