RUSH: I checked the e-mail during the break. A lot of people, ‘Rush, why are you feeling so bad about Hillary going down the tubes?’ Well, because I really think I started this snowball heading down the mountainside. I think I started this avalanche. Take you back, it was the day before, maybe it was the day of, I’m not sure, but they had a debate in Philadelphia, Drexel University, and that day there was a story in New York Newsday about what a nuclear issue driver’s licenses for illegal aliens was in New York, and how Mrs. Clinton hadn’t been asked about it. I’m reading this reporter of Newsday write this, and I start screaming, ‘Well, then ask her! What are you doing, saving her? Are you protecting her? You’re shielding her? If it’s such a nuclear issue, ask her about it.’
Well, Russert did that night at the debate, Drexel University in Philadelphia, and that’s when the wheels came off and Dodd jumped all over her because she flip-flopped two or three times during the debate and she said something different in the debate than she had said to the editorial board meeting of some New Hampshire newspaper. That’s when it all started, and, folks, it wouldn’t have happened had I not made a big deal. There’s nobody who would have seen that Newsday story and thought to ask Mrs. Clinton about it. But it was her state, it was the state of New York, and it was her governor, Eliot Spitzer that was thinking of giving driver’s licenses to illegals. Of course, our friends at the Wall Street Journal and other places say illegal immigration is not a story, it’s not a big issue, it’s not going to matter, but it was the thing that started this tumbleweed. But at the time I had no idea, I literally had no idea that the Clinton machine would be this embarrassed. I had no idea they would be this ineffective. I am stunned. It is obvious, it is obvious that the Clinton machine doesn’t have anything on Obama, because if they’d had anything on Obama, the type of things that Clinton, Inc., usually uses on people, they’d have brought it out before Super Tuesday. But now they’re out there with these pictures, charges of plagiarism and so forth. It’s pathetic, it is weak. It’s as I said yesterday, we don’t want this Democrat campaign to end now.
There’s a story, a couple of them here in the Democrat stack that I had today of Republican voters in Texas planning across-the-aisle votes for Obama. No, no, no. I know we discussed this. We had callers here seeking advice asking if they should pimp themselves for a day, since we have our nominee, Senator McCain, just go across the aisle and vote for Obama. Ah, it could be fun. I’ve been thinking about this. We need Hillary. We need the soap opera. Hillary Clinton is J. R. Ewing, and her husband, Bill, is Sue Ellen. We need to keep this soap opera going, but we also need the chaos. We need somebody roughing up Obama before it’s our turn to get there, because, as it’s been demonstrated, the Republicans have a reticence in doing so. They are sending out memos, we can’t attack Obama, we’ll be accused of racism. Somebody’s gotta criticize him; somebody’s gotta bloody the guy up. He’s shown he’s sensitive to it here, and the Clintons are the one to do this. If they can pull out one of these two states, Texas or Ohio, then she will go on. We need chaos in this party. Bill Clinton ran a commercial on this program moments ago asking for that very — Mike, do you have that commercial again with Ted Kennedy singing the whole way through? Bill Clinton is asking for the same thing I’m — Clinton and I on the same page here.
(playing of Clinton spoof)
President Clinton is on our side in this. We have to keep this going. Look, it’s about winning, folks. It is about the Democrats being defeated. We need them at war with one another. It’s like when the enemy is eating themselves alive, you pass the salt, you get out of the way. They are tearing themselves apart. They’ve got an uncivil race war going on. We heard yesterday that South Florida liberal Jewish voters do not and will not vote for Obama. Cokie Roberts and Dee Dee Myers are still on the warpath today about what was happening yesterday. They are fed up. They are livid, ladies and gentlemen, that here’s this highly competent white woman, and she has given this country everything, 35 years, and people are fleeing, and they’re going to vote for a rookie black guy? They think it’s sexism. Let’s go audio sound bite number four. Last night, the Tavis Smiley show on PBS. He talked to former press secretary Dee Dee Myers. Tavis Smiley said, ‘Assess for me from your womanhoodness –‘ He actually said that, Tavis Smiley on PBS, ‘Assess for me from your womanhoodness, how has Hillary been treated or maltreated?’
DEE DEE MYERS: I don’t think a woman with Senator Obama’s credentials, eight years in the Illinois state legislature and two years in the United States Senate before he announced his candidacy for president would have been taken seriously. And I think it would have been — I think she would have been treated like a nut job. The press has been harder on Hillary. I think you can still say pretty much anything about a woman without much penalty. Rush Limbaugh has said horrible things about Hillary Clinton, and, you know, Rush Limbaugh says horrible things about a lot of people, but nobody reacted to the really sexist nature, ‘Does America really want to watch a woman get old before our eyes?’ As if men don’t age in the White House, by the way. So I just think all those things are kind of undermining of her candidacy and her campaign.
RUSH: Dee Dee Myers struggling in vain for a coherent thought in answer to her question of Tavis Smiley. Dee Dee, my comment was discussed and sliced and diced for two weeks if not more, and you might be interested in knowing that people like Maureen Dowd understood what I was talking about. I was talking about American culture and our addiction to perfection and wondering whether or not that would be deleterious for Mrs. Clinton. It looks like it may have been. I was on to something, and a lot of people knew this. As if men don’t age — we even discussed that, Dee Dee. Men age, and unfortunately for women and everybody else, men happen to get better looking, they acquire more stature. Well, in some cases, it’s true. You can find an example where this is not the case. But we all know this is a lament. Come on, I’m not making anything up here. This is nothing new. I just have the guts to verbalize it. We all know this is the case. I simply asked the question after that picture ended up on The Drudge Report, but it was not swept under the rug and I caught a lot of grief for it. But you see Dee Dee still miffed, still upset, that women are going to abandon Hillary after all she’s accomplished. Yesterday we had these women thinking they’ve been sold out, their lives mean nothing now because people are betraying Hillary and abandoning her. Cokie Roberts back at it, Good Morning America today. Robin Roberts said, ‘Many people are wondering how far she can go in attacking Obama. Even President Clinton’s former press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, made a comment about it being harder being a woman to walk that fine line.’
COKIE ROBERTS: I think that’s absolutely true. It is hard for women to succeed in walking that fine line. And words like ‘shrill’ and ‘strident’ are applied to women, words you never hear applied to a man. So it’s very difficult, and she hasn’t always succeeded.
RUSH: Really? Anybody ever heard of Howard Dean? Shrill, strident.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back to the archives. By the way, welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, as usual, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair. Back to the archives. This is what started the nosedive of the Clinton campaign. This is me. This is October 30th of 2007.
RUSH ARCHIVE: What is amazing to me about this is how Mrs. Clinton gets to be quiet when she wants to be quiet. This is her state! The fact that she’s a presidential candidate only adds to the fact she should be asked about this. The fact that she’s a senator from the state of New York and not being peppered by the press, ‘What do you think of the governor’s plans here for illegal immigrants getting driver’s licenses?’ It is amazing how she’s able to skate. She’s given a pass! It’s ‘too radioactive’ for her, writes the AP. Man, oh, man, oh, man. Would I have loved over several occasions the last 18 years for you dummkopfs in the media to think certain issues were too radioactive for me to talk about. Good grief! The woman doesn’t have to say diddly-squat about anything, and she doesn’t.
RUSH: Well, see, that’s a long time ago now. So let’s jump forward to later that night at the debate. It was on DNCTV, Drexel University, Tim Russert said, ‘Senator Clinton, Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer has proposed giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. He told the Nashua, New Hampshire, Editorial Board it ‘makes a lot of sense.’ Why does it make a lot of sense to give an illegal immigrant a driver’s license?’
HILLARY: Well, what Governor Spitzer is trying to do is fill the vacuum left by the failure of this administration to bring about comprehensive immigration reform. We know in New York we have several million, at any one time, who are in New York illegally. They are undocumented workers. They are driving on our roads. The possibility of them having an accident that harms themselves or others, is just a matter of the odds. It’s probability. So what Governor Spitzer is trying to do is to fill the vacuum.
RUSH: So she tried to dump this off on the Bush administration — and then Chris Dodd and a whole bunch of others on the panel just jumped her, and she tried to rephrase her position. So she flip-flopped in the debate. But, anyway, I just wanted to get it on record and document it, and remind you; this is when it all starts. It’s part of the reason I’m feeling bad today. I brought this on. But I never thought it would get to this point. I never thought it would get to the point where if she loses two more states it’s effectively over, unless they bomb the conventional hall in Denver in August — still a possibility, by the way.
Jay in Cleveland, let’s start on the phones. Great to have you with us, sir. You’re in the middle of like a blizzard up there.
CALLER: Rush. Yes, absolutely. It’s a little snowy sitting out here in the car in a parking lot here during lunch, and listening to the show, and I absolutely degree 100% with everything you’ve just said about Hillary. I’m one of those Republicans who I’m going to take my vote and vote for Hillary next week in Ohio here. I encourage everybody else to do the same thing. We gotta keep the chaos going. But, Rush, I gotta tell you, I don’t think you’re taking this far enough. I tell you that if you start looking at all the polls and trends and everything, Obama is going to crush John McCain in the general election, because the media’s going to give him a free pass. The base for Democrats, it’s going to be energized and it’s just going to — and, of course, you know, John McCain being our nominee, the base isn’t really going to be fired up for him. So it’s just a slaughter waiting to happen, so to speak. However, if Hillary gets the nomination — especially if she has to rip it from Obama at the last second at the convention — then you got a whole segment of the Democrat base that are likely going to sit out or maybe even switch over to the Republican side. If Hillary’s the nominee, then the Republican base gets fired up, John McCain actually looks good, and on and on and on.
RUSH: Well, let’s take the first thing you said. These national polls — I’ve seen them — that show Obama cleaning up against McCain. You can’t… It’s only February, and these polls don’t mean anything yet. They really, really don’t. You can’t ignore them, but you have to analyze them a certain way. How much of the Wilder Effect is in these polls? We know a lot of people — who will not tell pollster that — are going to vote against Obama. We just know this. But I agree with you. Hillary is already a known quantity. She’s so well known, half the country hates her.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: She’s got negatives. We don’t have time to build up that kind of — and we’re not going to succeed in building up that kind of disapproval number for Obama. It just isn’t going to happen. But beyond that, the whole point is we want the Democrat Party to do as much as it can to destroy itself. There are a lot of fractures and fissures in this party right now. It is not smooth as glass over there, and we need this to continue. Now, I know when you say I’m not taking it far enough, what you’re actually suggesting that what I want — or what we all should be for — is for Hillary to get the nomination. Is that what you mean?
CALLER: Get the nomination, but only if — you know, like you said, if she has to blow up the convention to do it and literally rip it away from Obama, then that’s the best scenario.
RUSH: Yeah, but even if she doesn’t, even if she doesn’t get the nomination, we need her to bloody Obama up.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: He’s running around. He’s messianic. He’s angelic right now. Our party has put out memos saying, ‘We’re not going to be critical of him because we don’t want to be accused of being this -ism or that -ism.’ The Clintons, at this point, will do anything. They’re desperate. It doesn’t matter. They’ll deal with the mess they make later.
CALLER: Exactly. But my other concern is if Obama does wrap it up here with Ohio and Texas, then the press is — you know, all this talk about, oh, the truth is going to come out about Obama, it just won’t happen because the press is persistent if nothing. You know, Abu Ghraib, (garbled), New York Times.
RUSH: I know, they love Obama. But that’s where Obama’s going to have some Democrat Party defections that these polls don’t show. Now, whether those people don’t vote or switch across and vote for McCain is an unknown. Anyway, Jay, I appreciate it.