So the fact that this thing somehow got cleared, to me, is reason for optimism. It’s the same thing with the pope’s visit, which concluded last night in New York. When I watched this, what strikes me… I got a note from a friend over the weekend who had been one of my 15 visitors last weekend and was very distressed just reading the newspaper every day, and was one of these people that asked me how I maintain my confidence and so forth. It got me to thinking about how many people — how many kids, how many young people — who would watch the John Adams series on HBO would care? I’ve been thinking a lot, folks, about how to go after Obama. Now, Drudge has got some internal Hillary polling data that shows she’s up by 11. This is Clinton internal polling, and they’re all excited in the Clinton campaign. They think this is going to be a big, big win for momentum to carry her. She’s moving on, I guess, to North Carolina. Indiana, tomorrow night, is where she’s going to be. They seem pretty confident. Obama is not predicting a win in Pennsylvania, so maybe their internal polling is correct, but I’ve been listening to — and pardon me for being scattershot here. I am going to tie all this together. Just stick with me.
But I have been listening to all of the attempts that people are making to bring Obama down — and, by the way, these attempts are not so much to destroy him or harm him in the Democrat primary because it isn’t going to happen. So we’re looking at the general election in terms of Obama. This weekend, I ran into some Republicans who were for Obama. They know full-fledged he’s a liberal. They don’t care. They like his personality. So when you tell ’em about William Ayers, they don’t care. When you tell ’em about Jeremiah Wright (and they know), they don’t care, because to them that’s the past, and Obama is not about the past. Obama is about the future! Obama is not even about now. Obama’s about the future. So, how does this tie into the John Adams series? You take some average Americans who went to the public school system and graduated say in the last 20 years and make ’em watch that, how many of them would care? ‘Well, that’s the past. It’s the past.’ My point is this: People who support Obama don’t care about anything in the past, including American history and the founding, or they’re not that much interested in it. They don’t think it’s relevant. And all of this, as I have been feverishly pondering over the weekend, ties into how Obama is to be attacked as a campaign opponent once the general election begins. It ain’t going to happen…
The guy is every bit as big a liar as Bill Clinton, and we know that didn’t get us anywhere by pointing out to people that Bill Clinton lied. They didn’t care. They liked Bill Clinton’s personality, which frosted a whole bunch of us. We couldn’t understand it, but they did. They like Obama’s personality. Calling him a liar, calling him a liberal, those kind of things aren’t going to work. Pointing out his liberalism? ‘It’s in the past.’ Obama is not about the past. The past doesn’t matter to a whole lot of people, because they’re so concerned about the future. The recent past that they know is one they don’t like. Some Republicans, and especially the Democrat side — the Bush administration, the war in Iraq — they don’t care. When you’re talking about Democrats anyway, anything goes. It doesn’t matter what the past was so bad as far as liberals are concerned that whatever it takes to erase it, is fine with them. So what’s the only avenue open? I mean, we can shout Bill Ayers, William Ayers, has terrorist ties, all these things. We could find out everything Obama said at that secret meeting in 1995 when Ayers hosted a little party to inaugurate Obama’s campaign for the state senate. None of it’s going to matter.
I don’t know how many people are taught that, anymore. I don’t think very many at all. So, it’s the past, and they don’t care about it. And one of the reasons they don’t care is because it hasn’t been taught. So you’ve got a massive education failure, while at the same time a massive education project, in order inspire concern and to have people be interested in the past because the past is where you learn. It’s like Mitch Daniels. Mitch Daniels was in the Reagan administration. Mitch Daniels is the governor of Indiana. Snerdley, did you hear what Mitch Daniels said over the weekend? Mitch Daniels said it’s time to let Ronald Reagan go. ‘He delivered his remarks to a room full of fellow red-staters at the Fund for American Studies’ annual conference and donor retreat at the Newseum in Washington, DC. He said, ‘Nostalgia is fine and Reagan’s economic plan was good, but we need to look towards the future rather than staying in the past.” Now, when’s the last time you ever heard a liberal Democrat say it’s time to let JFK go; it’s time to let FDR go? They never will, and if any in their party would say it they’d kick ’em out as fast as they kicked out Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman. They would run ’em out of the party.
Now we’ve got Mitch Daniels, who is a conservative guy, saying it’s time to get over Reagan; time to let Reagan go. Asinine! It’s stupid. The past particularly — the country’s past or conservative movement’s past — is fundamentally crucial to people to understand it. When people don’t, then they will forget it because it was nothing worth remembering in the first place because nobody told ’em about it. So we have a very, very weak education system. The fundamentals that built this country and hold it together are no longer taught with reverence. If they are taught, they’re probably taught with scorn more than reverence. So now we have a candidate on the Democrat side about whom people do not care, about his past. They are uninterested. We can shout the name Bill Ayers all we want. We can shout Jeremiah Wright all we want; we can play those sermons you’ll we want. We can have McCain out there as he took a little jab over the weekend at Obama. We can have McCain out there saying that these relationships he has are very troubling, (doing McCain impression), ‘But I’m not questioning his patriotism! Make sure you say that, Limbaugh. I’m not questioning his patriotism!’ Yeah, see, these relationships he has with the radicals are very troubling, but I’m not questioning his patriotism.
Of course not! So the only way, folks (sigh), the only way to sort of take away this aura of mystique and mysticism about the future surrounding Obama is going to be putting chinks in his personality like happened in the debate last Wednesday or Tuesday, whatever it was. It was Wednesday? The days run together. Now, it didn’t particularly matter in that debate because the Drive-Bys are going to circle the wagons and go after the media for exposing Obama’s weakness. When this guy’s not got a teleprompter, when he doesn’t have a speech written for him by Axelrod or somebody, he can’t take a punch. He’s got a glass jaw. He’s got a sense of entitlement about him that says, ‘I do not and will not be criticized. I’m too important!’ The media people, Drive-Bys, that are going to shield him in that regard. He’s so important, no criticism is worth it. It’s not valid. It’s all in the past. So whoever is going to be in charge of the campaign to defeat Obama is going to have to find a way to trip him up so that he exposes the fraud that is this mystic, messianic personality that he has. I say this for two reasons, just to sum it up. One: where Obama is concerned, the past is the past, and it’s not reveled to him.
He is the future! His supporter is not based on issues. It’s not based on personality. Look, there are some Republicans who are enamored of Obama. They like him, and they know he’s a full-fledged liberal. They know he’s a socialist. They don’t care! They don’t care. It’s something else that binds them. It’s this mystic, it’s this youth, it’s this personality, it’s this hope for change. All that stuff is working on them. I don’t know how many, but it’s certainly some. If there are a significant number of Republicans who want to vote Obama for president for those reasons, you’re not going to turn them off to Obama by running around saying, ‘Well, do you know what he’s going to do to your taxes? Do you know what he’s going to do to your liberty?’ They don’t want to hear it. They have a different kind of attraction to the guy, even though he has not been on that message ever since Ohio and Texas. Since those primaries were over, he’s been forced off that message. Who knows? There may be some problems for him in the primary right now. The superdelegates, a lot of them still aren’t committing. They don’t want to talk about it. Clinton’s got this internal polling saying she’s 11 points up. We’ll have to see what happens. Operation Chaos goes into effect in less than 24 hours. Soldiers are ready to march to the battlefield.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mark in Eureka, Illinois. We’ll start with you today. It’s nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: Semper Fi hellos from Eureka. Hey, Rush, I agree with all your comments this morning, and the question I have for you —
RUSH: They make a lot of sense, don’t they?
CALLER: Oh, they make more than a lot of sense.
RUSH: I know. That’s true. Thank you for saying that.
CALLER: (laughs) Here’s what I’m struggling with, Rush. You have said for many years — and I have always agreed with you, and I’m not talking about your audience — that you have faith in the American people to make the right decision in the end.
RUSH: I do.
CALLER: But if you look what’s going on now, Rush, I’ll be honest. I’m losing that faith. I’m losing that faith. I mean if you dissect it, you got McCain, you got Hillary, you got Barack — and real quick, I’ll bring it close to home. I live on the far western suburbs of Chicago, and we lost Denny Hastert’s seat to a Democrat this year. That’s like Chicago going Republican, and if you put all this together —
RUSH: Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something, pal. My faith in the American people remains strong. Hastert lost that seat because the Republicans didn’t do anything to defend it! The Republicans are not giving anybody a reason to vote for them.
CALLER: Rush, I agree with you.
RUSH: The American people are not stupid. They’re not cheap. They’re not going to vote for Republicans… Especially conservative Republicans, the Republican Party is giving them no reason whatsoever. In fact, prominent conservatives are running around, ‘Forget that you’re a conservative. Forget Reagan. We gotta let Reagan go. Reagan is the past.’ My faith in the American people’s intelligence, especially on our side, is buttressed. There’s really no reason… You know, Hastert’s seat is not owned by the Republicans. It’s not automatic. Nothing in politics is. But I don’t want to get too deep. I’ve told you all that I was profoundly stirred in my soul last week with everything that happened — and I came to realize something, that my faith in the American people is actually a faith in this country, because I do believe it’s been blessed by God, and that’s the source of my optimism.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back to a Politico story that we did in the first hour of the program today. They talk about the 178,000 people who have switched parties to vote in the Democrat presidential primary tomorrow in Pennsylvania, and of that 178,000, 92% — 92% of the 178,000 — are Republicans switching to vote Democrat. They are 7% of the electorate for Tuesday. The Drive-Bys and everybody is running around saying that 60% of the Republicans who have registered as Democrats, are going to vote for Obama. This is being done for two reasons. A, it’s to build up Obama; and second, it’s to diminish Operation Chaos. Now, this all got started in the first hour today after I had learned over the weekend, something that’s been popping up with me for the past week or so. I’m running into some Republicans who are conservatives — I wouldn’t call them ideologues like I’m an ideologue and like you might be — but they’re attracted to Obama. They know he’s a liberal, and they don’t care. They’re attracted to him because he is new and fresh, and there is this messianic quality about him. There’s something magical, mystical. They think the country will have a marvelous new attitude and change if they elect Obama.
What it boils down to is, even these Republicans voting for this guy, they’ll listen to me when I tell them how radical he is, and they don’t care. They still think he would be good for the country because it’s personality. It really is no more complicated than that. He’s young. He’s vibrant. They think he speaks well, so it looks like he’s got a great personality. I mentioned that going after all these people he hangs around with, Reverend Wright, Ayers, all these other people, it’s not going to faze ’em. It’s not going to faze most Obama voters, very few of them, because that’s the past. It’s in is past and it doesn’t matter. Obama represents the future. Now, I think in truth that way out there in flyover country, where there aren’t any more presidential primaries and where people aren’t being polled as regularly, I think it’s done Obama tremendous damage, but the people who… They are still some Republicans who think. They’re so disgusted with their own party, I gotta include that, have to throw that in there as one of the reasons why they find Obama attractive. It’s just new. It’s different.
It’s change, and they don’t care about the specifics. So the point is, if we’re going to defeat Obama, all these associations that he has, it’s not going to matter to people because it’s in the past — especially Ayers and especially the preacher. ‘That’s all in the past, Rush! It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.’ I’ve run the test, folks. Admittedly this is anecdotal, but I’ve run the test and they don’t care. Some of them say, ‘Well, just look at McCain. He loses his temper. He looks mad walking around all the time. Obama looks happy! He’s smiling, he’s soft-spoken.’ It’s amazing the impact a personality has from television on people in terms of whether they like them and would want to see them on TV multiple times a day as president. It pains me to admit that there’s so many Americans or at least enough of them that are that shallow that on the basis of personality — which they think is character, which it isn’t; but they think equals character — they think they’re doing a good thing. But I would say to the Politico and the rest of the Drive-By Media: You think that 60% of these courageous volunteers, Operation Chaos, are going to vote for Obama, how come he has lost the popular vote in all these big states?
He lost the popular vote in New Jersey, in New York, in California, Texas, Ohio. He lost the popular vote. He will probably lose the popular vote in Pennsylvania. He is losing support right now among white voters. So where is this great sea change in the country that Obama’s going to bring about? Even Republican friends of mine who look at Obama and kind of go, ‘Oh!’ like people used to look at Clinton. ‘Wow, charisma and all!’ Where is this giant sea change? It’s all a myth. Obama is a myth. Obama is just a man. Algore is a tree, Obama is a man, and there’s nothing messianic about him. He has very little experience. He cannot take a punch. He is so arrogant and condescending, he doesn’t think he should have to. He shouldn’t be asked challenging questions! It’s almost like the attitude the Clintons had when they rode into town in 1993. They were the saviors. We had the worst economy in the last 50 years. Don’t ask us these questions. ‘Don’t you understand who we are? You should be down on your knees and bowing to us as we ride into town!’ Obama believes that about himself to a certain extent. So whenever he gets questions about his associations or his policies, he says, ‘Can we let this go? We’ve been talking about this for six months now in this campaign. Can we get something new?’
Well, Mr. Obama, the reason why those questions were asked is because there’s not a smidgen bit of difference between you and Hillary when it comes to policy, and so how are people going to determine the difference? We’ve already learned that Democrats don’t care that their candidate lies through his teeth or her teeth. We’ve learned that. So we’re trying to find out, do Democrats care who you run around with who your associates are, who your mentors are, who bent you shaped you and formed you? These things, if you’re running on a personality campaign, if you’re running as a messiah or an agent of sea change or hope, then you better put yourself front and center where people can see you’re going to make it happen — and this is my point. Obama’s not made it happen. He’s not unifying anybody. If he was this great beacon of hope, for crying out loud, Hillary Clinton would have been put away six months ago! McCain wouldn’t be leading in the polls. If Obama was what the Drive-Bys’ image of him is — if Obama was what he thinks he is — he ought to be 60-40 ahead or higher in national polls against any Republican, and Mrs. Clinton should have been dispatched months ago.
But he’s not. He can’t even put her away. He cannot drill the nail in the final nail in the coffin. Cannot do it. So where’s the sea change? Where are all these people uniting around him? They aren’t! It’s a giant Drive-By Media and Obama joint myth. So you guys at Politico.com, let’s just hold on to see what happens tomorrow with Operation Chaos and the primary in Pennsylvania. Because there’s so much myth-making that’s been going on here — and as usual with the left, it’s based on image, marketing, packaging. It’s not based on any truth here. But if he gets the nomination, two schools of thought: He’s either already lost the general in the primaries because of these insults that he has made, and the Drive-Bys are just missing it because they need a visa, you know, to go to Iowa. You know, they need a visa to get into Missouri because to them it’s a foreign country. They don’t have any interest in that ’til we get to the general. They just look at national polls in terms of presidential preference.
If he hasn’t already lost it, McCain or whoever, whoever is going to run the Republican operation, you’re not gonna beat Obama by calling him a liberal. People who support him don’t care, even Republicans who know. You’re not going to beat him by associating him with all these nut jobs in his past. You’re not going to beat him by calling him a liar. You’re not going to beat him on character. We tried all this stuff with Clinton, and it didn’t work. It made him stronger. It created sympathy for him. Since this guy is a myth, and the myth is that he’s messianic and makes people feel good and has a great personality and he’s young, that’s what’s going to have to be shown to be false — and that’s going to take tough questions. That’s going to take constant, in a political realm: body blows, right hooks, left jabs. It’s going to take a lot of stuff because Obama doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to get hit. He’s offended. He starts whining.
But that’s what needs to start happening. By the way, remember when Maureen Dowd first made jokes about his ears? He made a beeline to her in the audience, ‘I’m very sensitive about my ears,’ and she said, ‘We’re just trying to toughen you up.’ Well, it hasn’t worked yet. They haven’t toughened him up. They have protected him. This is all because we had a call here minutes ago about the associations Obama has, and this guy’s theory was that Obama supporters think he’s cool, and that some of his associations with these wackos, ‘Is kind of cool. It’s kind of neat, Rush! I mean, he’s flirting on the edge! The guy that his friends a terrorist who blew up the Pentagon, it’s kind of cool! It’s kind of cool that we got a guy that knows something like that, and won’t disavow him. It’s kind of cool he’s got this nut job preacher. It’s kind of cool that his wife hates the country. It’s kind of cool that everybody around him is P’d off. It’s kind of cool.’ That was his theory. It may be, for some people. But in the general that’s going to come home to roost at some point.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Bill in Wilmington, Delaware. Bill, welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Longtime listener, first-time caller. I had to call because at the beginning of your show you mentioned what a liar Obama is. Well, last night on CNN, I was shocked when he was asked a question, and during that answer, he lied about his mentorship with Jeremiah Wright. The way he did it was chilling. When in the middle of the question he said, ‘Oh, there’s a story out there that Reverend Wright was my mentor,’ and he shook his head and said, ‘No, he was my pastor,’ and I was just taken back by that.
RUSH: You know, he’s been doing this a lot. But the press calls these ‘misstatements,’ things that need to be corrected. He’s just tired. It’s a grueling campaign out there, Bill. Everybody understands you can make misstatements and make missteps. In the last debate they had, he actually said that he had ‘disowned’ Reverend Wright!
CALLER: I heard that.
RUSH: But he hasn’t disowned him. He made a race speech where he specifically said he couldn’t and wouldn’t, and yet in the debate he said that he did.
CALLER: Well, he also —
RUSH: He isn’t ever called on these things, but it isn’t going to matter. You could tell an Obama supporter this stuff. You just tell the Obama supporter what you just told me, ‘Hey, he said Wright was just a pastor, never did mentor him.’ The Obama supporter will say, ‘That’s in the past! That doesn’t interest me. I don’t care. I’m not voting for the pastor.’
CALLER: The way he says it and the away you puts it together, too. It’s like a Bill Clinton style for the lie but if we look at the first interview on the breaking story with Fox News with Major Garrett, he was very adamant that he was my uncle, he’s like family, and he’s been my mentor for 20 years — and last night, he disavowed that.
RUSH: That’s right. This all goes back to my explanation that he has an entitlement and an arrogance that he can basically say whatever he wants to say. We shouldn’t challenge him on it because it’s minutiae. It doesn’t make any difference to health care and fixing the country and getting out of Iraq. Those things are so distracting. They’re just distractions. It’s the usual Washington politics. That’s the way he explains away every time he gets caught in a fib or a big lie, and his supporters say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah! I don’t care about that. We’ve gotta fix the economy. We’ve gotta get gas prices down. We gotta find alternative fuels. We gotta get out of Iraq, and get my kids into college free. We gotta do a lot of things here. I don’t care what these other things that Barack does.’ That’s his supporter base.
CALLER: Well, I think it’s very scary, Rush. Well, anyhow, thank you for taking my call, and I love your program.
RUSH: Thank you. Well, it’s not that it’s not scary. We’ve run into these characters before. They’re called politicians. You spell it p-o-l-i-t-i-c-i-a-n, and put an ‘S’ on the end of it for plural. They are politicians. By definition they are. It’s just like an NFL general manager in the month of April leading up to the NFL draft. They lie every time they open their mouths. It’s part of the job. You have the draft coming up. You don’t want the other teams to know what you’re going to do draft-wise. Trades are going to be made, hope to be made. Politicians lie as a routine. There’s nothing unique about Barack Obama in any way, shape, manner, or form, folks.