RUSH: Here is the ad that will run — by the way, Reuters had a story yesterday that the North Carolina Republican Party pulled this ad. They have not pulled the ad. I don’t know who told Reuters this or if Reuters just made it up, but they have not pulled the ad. It is going to run Monday. We have seen to it, though, that even if they do pull it, it’s going to air. They’re not going to pull it, and McCain is fit to be tied. Here is the ad in question, the North Carolina Republican Party TV ad: Jeremiah Wright and the North Carolina Republican Party chairman Linda Daves also appear in this audio.
FEMALE ANNOUNCER: For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew listening to his pastor.
WRIGHT (screaming): And then wants us to sing God Bless America? No, no, no! Not God Bless America. God (bleep) America!
FEMALE ANNOUNCER: Now, Bev Perdue and Richard Moore endorse Barack Obama. They should know better. He’s just too extreme for North Carolina.
DAVES: The North Carolina Republican Party sponsored this ad opposing Bev Perdue and Richard Moore for North Carolina governor.
RUSH: That’s Linda Daves, the last voice on the ad that you heard. So today on the Today show Meredith Vieira is talking to Senator McCain, and she said, ‘The ad says Obama’s, quote, ‘just too extreme for North Carolina.’ Now, you’ve called this ad ‘degrading,’ and you’ve asked the state party to pull it, but so far they’ve refused to do that. Why do you think they’re not listening to you, A? And why do you believe that they would continue to raise questions about Senator Obama’s patriotism?’
MCCAIN: They’re not listening to me because they’re out of touch with reality and the Republican Party. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, and this kind of, uh, campaigning is unacceptable. I’ve said that. It will harm, uh, the Republicans’ cause, and I’ve done everything that I can to repudiate and to see that this kind of campaigning does not, uh, continue. I have engaged in and will continue a respectful campaign of either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton.
RUSH: Yeah. People are rightly livid about this. Senator McCain loves to make nice with liberal Democrats, loves to be critical of the Republican Party. The ego in this! I have tried? ‘I have tried, but they aren’t listening to me because they are out of touch with reality.’ Meredith Vieira then said, ‘Senator Obama said that if you wanted to, you could get that ad pulled; because you are, after all, the nominee, and the standard-bearer. So if you can’t get the ad pulled, does it raise any questions about your leadership?’
MCCAIN: I don’t know exactly how to respond to that except that I would hope that, uh, Senator Obama would, uh, repudiate and apologize for his remarks concerning the heartland of America; where his elitist remarks indicated that people who are hard working, dedicated people who harbor traditional values and principles and value their religion and Second Amendment of the Constitution; would not be treated in an elitist fashion. I hope he’ll apologize for that.
RUSH: What the hell is going on here? Is this whole campaign going to be one side saying, ‘You repudiate that!’
‘No, you repudiate that!’
‘I have repudiated that, and I have apologized. Now you apologize!’
This is the big leagues! Obama is not going to repudiate anything, Senator McCain! He’ll send out some underlings to make a pass at repudiating things. This is absurd! In addition to being insulting; it is absurd to sit there and sit around — I would hope he would go out and repudiate this? It got even worse on the CBS Early Show today, Maggie Rodriguez talking to Senator McCain. Question: ‘The Republican Party in North Carolina is planning to run an ad bashing Senator Obama. I know you opposed the ad, but they’re running it anyway. So what does that say about you, that you haven’t opposed it strongly enough or your own party is blatantly disagreeing and disregarding your wishes?’
MCCAIN: It means that the Republican Party of the state of North Carolina is dead wrong. They are an independent organization. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure not only they stop it, but that kind of leadership is rejected; and the overwhelming majority of Republicans in North Carolina share my view.
RODRIQUEZ: But as the Republican nominee for president, couldn’t you pick up the phone and call the head of the North Carolina GOP and say, ‘Don’t run it’?
MCCAIN: I have communicated that in every possible way, and, uh, I will, uh, continue to communicate that.
RUSH: I saw Linda Daves on TV this morning; she’s not going to listen to him. It’s a North Carolina issue. It doesn’t have anything to do with the presidential race. It’s not a racist ad! You know, McCain’s out there; he’s been critical of Bill Ayers, who was Obama’s very close buddy, and is radicalizing the US education system even as we speak. So he’ll be critical of Ayers, but you put Jeremiah Wright in this thing — and here comes the very reason for Operation Chaos; and that is the Republican Party will not dare offer any criticism of Obama because they, for some reason, fear the charge of racism. Yesterday on the Fox News Channel Studio B with Shepard Smith, he talked to McCain, and he asked him, ‘What about that North Carolina ad was offensive to you, Senator?’
MCCAIN: I think it’s — Anyone who watched it was offensive in that it, uh, brought, ehh, elements into this race which are —
SMITH: Race?
MCCAIN: — excuse me. Into this contest, of race, that are totally unacceptable. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln and the party of — of Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. That’s just not the kind of advertising we want to do. We want this race decided on the issues.
RUSH: Obama’s associates and his character are issues! There’s nothing racist about the ad.
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RUSH: McCain is attacking the North Carolina Republican Party. He is saying they’re ‘out of touch with reality,’ as defined by him. They are not listening to him. He’s going to do what he can to get the ad canceled because it’s racist. Question, Senator McCain: ‘What if the North Carolina Republican Party or any other state Republican Party ran the same ad, but put Bill Ayers in it instead of Jeremiah Wright? Would you oppose that ad?’ Because there’s no difference other than the color of the skin of one of the Obama associates. I think… This is very, very tough for me, folks, but I think Senator McCain has a responsibility now to explain exactly what is racist about this ad. This is precisely what the Drive-Bys want in the Democrat Party: they want any criticism of Obama to be disqualified and not permitted because it’s racist, and McCain’s falling right in line. And don’t tell me he’s got some grand strategy here to pick up a lot of black vote in the general election.
That’s not what this is. If you think there’s a grand strategy here, you’re missing the point. Keep listening. Senator McCain owes us an explanation. Tell us what is racist about this North Carolina ad. He sounds just like a liberal, asking that we may take inferences about the North Carolina Republican Party and the people that run it. I take from this several things. Number one: it appears to me that Senator McCain is back to his usual tactics of using Republicans as foils. He’s attacking the president over Hurricane Katrina. Not the mayor of New Orleans, but the president. He’s trying to prove to the liberal media, the so-called independents and Democrats, that he’s the eventual nominee of the Republican Party but that this is all about him. It’s not about Republicans, not conservatives, so no need to worry about him being too much of either. He’s sending a message to Democrats and independents whose votes he wants: ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m not one of these wacko conservative right-wingers.’ It’s about him, not about a grand strategy here.
That’s why he is relentlessly pounding away at the North Carolina party now. This is a tactic. He’s creating an image of himself at the expense of others, and he does this all the time. Now, I take from this — if you do want to talk about strategy — that McCain believes he has the South in his back pocket even though he didn’t win it in the primaries. Huckabee did. He wouldn’t risk alienating Southerners over an ad that clearly is not racist if he didn’t think he had the southern vote in his back pocket. I don’t think he understands how livid North Carolina Republicans are about this, and Republicans everywhere. Now, it is obvious to me (and this has been one of my concerns from the get-go) that Senator McCain has no interest in rebuilding the Republican Party as an institution. He intends, instead, to use it to achieve his ends and leave it in whatever state it is when he is done. Now, we know this. What was the purpose of McCain-Feingold? It was to cripple the party system.
It was to cripple the party system. It was McCain’s revenge when he lost the 2000 GOP primary which he blamed on party officials and Bush. It’s interesting. Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal has a piece today on how McCain has been hoodwinked by his own McCain-Feingold restrictions, and is now finding ways to get around his own restrictions in McCain-Feingold in order to raise money and keep up with Obama. Now, a question I have for Senator McCain and his handlers: ‘Senator, you love being praised as a ‘maverick;’ you love being praised as an independent. Why can’t the rest of us be independents? Why can’t the rest of us be mavericks?’ I want to be very clear about this, folks. If Senator McCain is campaigning not as a Republican or conservative, but as a ‘maverick,’ and an ‘independent,’ why shouldn’t we behave in the same way? Why do we have to fall in line with whatever he dictates? Why does the North Carolina Republican Party have to fall in line and do what he says; when he is free to abandon us at any and all times, on the basis of his own desire?
Why should Republicans vote for McCain? Just because he’s a Republican? McCain himself teaches us that’s the wrong thing to do! His recent Senate career is based not on voting for people or things because they’re Republican, but rather other criteria. So why should conservatives get behind McCain? Just because he claims to be conservative? He teaches us that’s the wrong thing to do as well. If McCain isn’t going to be loyal to his own party, and if he isn’t going to be loyal to conservative principles, why should Republicans be loyal to him? Why should conservatives be loyal to him? The way I see it, folks, we are all mavericks and we are all independents, now. Senator McCain, with these outbursts last night and today, seems to have reserved the right to dictate to all Republicans what they should say, what they shouldn’t say, what they should think; while at the same time reserving for himself the right to abandon the Republican Party whenever he so chooses.
So we’re supposed to do what he says. We’re supposed to not run commercials that he doesn’t like. We’re supposed to not criticize Obama in a way he doesn’t like. We’re only supposed to do what he tells us to do, but then he’s free to wander off the reservation any time he wants, and we are not to be critical of that. So it’s almost as though that he is demanding, McCain is demanding, that we follow a cult of personality here. But since we’re not Democrats and since we’re not liberals, we don’t do that. We don’t follow cults. Those of you who are conservative Republicans follow ideas. We follow issues. These ideas and issues that we believe are the best for the future much America and its people. We’re not interested in following a cult of personality because he makes us feel good, or because we think he cares, or because we think he’s some kind of messianic figure. If you want the support of conservative Republicans, if you want the loyalty of conservative Republicans, you have to earn it. You don’t get it by commanding we be loyal while you aren’t at the same time.
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RUSH: You know, what’s happening in North Carolina is that people are sending money to the North Carolina GOP in droves. For those of you state Republican Party operatives, this is how you raise money. You know, if the presidential candidate is not going to campaign, is not going to draw distinctions between our party and the Democrat Party, and you need money — and you want to do it yourself — look at North Carolina as an example. They’re not backing down. It’s not a racist ad. There’s nothing untoward about it, at all. Everything in it is true! Everything in it is true, and it seems that Senator McCain is not having as much influence with the state party organizations as he would like. Los Angeles Times today, headline: ‘More GOP ads target Obama — As they promote their candidates and try to pave the way for [Republican] victories this year, Republicans have begun making their case to voters in advertisements featuring a new star: Barack Obama.’
They talk about what’s going on in North Carolina. ‘In Louisiana, a [Republican] TV ad attacking Obama’s healthcare agenda as ‘radical’ proved so threatening that the House candidate it targeted, Democrat Don Cazayoux, distanced himself from Obama on Thursday,’ yesterday. The ad worked! ‘Clinton’s tumultuous presence on the national stage long has made her a favorite target of Republican attacks. But [Republican] strategists said the negative six-week campaign in Pennsylvania produced reams of material that, for the first time, laid out for them a clear pathway for attacking Obama. They pointed to the much-publicized sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. … 1960s radical Bill Ayers; and the senator’s own statement at a San Francisco-area fundraiser,’ about the bitter clingers.
‘Some Democratic activists said Thursday that they were worried about Obama’s prospects in the general election, wondering if certain working-class white Democratic voters might abandon him for the Republican nominee, particularly in key states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.’ So this story is Democrats are worried about the recent stumbles that Obama has made that will hurt him in swing states during the general election. The Republicans now have ‘a clear pathway’ to attack Obama, given Operation Chaos! Operation Chaos has produced this pathway by sustaining the Democrat Party nomination fight, which is… I knew it. Trust me, folks. McCain said it, but we knew it. Neither the Republican Party nor McCain were gonna bloody up Obama politically. Somebody had to do it. Who better than the Clintons? They’re experts as bloodying people politically. It has happened, and it’s given state Republican Party organizations, as they say, ‘a clear pathway.’ In fact, there’s a line in this story: ‘target-rich’ candidates. ‘Hillary is a better target for us. But the more you see Obama in action, the better we’re liking him,’ as a rich target!
So McCain is out there chastising the North Carolina Republican Party. They’re not listening to him. He’s upset about it. We’re supposed to do everything he says, but he’s allowed to be the maverick. He can cross the aisle. He can make deals with Democrats left and right. He can sell out his own party. He can leave his party in the lurch. But we? We are supposed to sit there and follow the orders as dictated by the enemy campaign. We’re not to run ads he doesn’t like. We’re not to say things he doesn’t like. We are to say things he does like. He’s free to abandon us; we have to stay loyal. He can be a ‘maverick.’ Well, Senator McCain, we are all mavericks now. We are all mavericks and independents, and that’s that. Here’s Senator McCain. We’re up to sound bite number nine. This is just… Well, you listen to it. Shepard Smith says, ‘Senator, are you gonna call on these 527s, the special interest groups not to campaign on your behalf outside of your rules?’
MCCAIN: I will ask 527s not to campaign on anybody’s behalf. They should stay out. If they want to contribute the — and be part of this campaign, they can do it, on both sides. I’m not saying unilaterally disarm. I am saying, everybody should stop it, and I call on the Federal Election Commission —
SMITH: So you’re telling 527s not to campaign on your behalf, right here and right now?
MCCAIN: I’m telling them not to campaign on my behalf. I’m telling 527s not to campaign on behalf of my — behalf of my opponents, either; and I’m calling on the FEC — if we ever get a viable FEC — to enforce existing law. Existing law, the ’74 law, says they’re clearly engaged in — in activity which is in violation of the law. But I’m calling on both sides, my friend. Both sides.
RUSH: (laughs) Folks, you can say this as well as I can say it. We only have 527s because of you, Senator! Campaign finance reform gave us 527s because you didn’t want the parties be involved, and so the money had to go somewhere. Do you know that George Soros has given that little squirt, David Brock, $40 million to run a 527 against you, Senator McCain? Do you think they’re going to disarm just because you proclaim it from the presidential campaign mountaintop? They might even lie to you, and say, ‘Okay, we will disarm,’ but they won’t. By the way, he says he’s ‘calling on the FEC — if we ever get a viable FEC.’ Who’s holding up the FEC having enough members to get into gear? Harry Reid! Dingy Harry. He’s upset. He’s demanding something somewhere. I forget all the details about it, but the very people that Senator McCain loves to make deals with are now stiffing him on the FEC. This is Wednesday in Inez, Kentucky. Senator McCain held a press conference and said this about the North Carolina Republican Party ad.
MCCAIN: We called and asked them not to run that message. It’s not the message of the Republican Party.
RUSH: April 15th, 2008, Hardball: Chris Matthews live from the campus of Villanova University. Matthews interviewed McCain. They had this exchange about the presidential race.
MATTHEWS: Would you sit down with the Democrat nominee — whoever it is, Hillary or Barack — and agree to them that there will be no outside sleazeball attacks by either side, then you will tell their people you will condemn any attack — like the swiftboating — and you’ll both agree to do that up front, right after you get the nominations? Would you do that?
MCCAIN: I’d love to do that.
RUSH: Snerdley just asked, why am I doing this to you; meaning, why am I playing all of these bites? Because you’ve gotta know. I told you at the outset when we started this hour, this is not going to be easy for me. This isn’t going to be easy for me. I have never in my life been in this situation as a conservative in a presidential race. I have never been in it. This is virgin territory for me. I am not going to capitulate, or carry water for these people. This is anathema to me. The idea that these people on the left are going to stop? Senator McCain, do you know who Barack Obama’s best friends are? Do you understand what you are up against? You’re up against this wacko preacher. Folks, last night I was having some e-mail back-and-forth with some friends, and I said, ‘Just for the sake of humoring me, who do you think would be more damaging to the country, Hillary or Obama?’ and we went back and forth on this, and we concluded they’re both socialists and they’re both radicals.
Neither of them would be good. Here we are. But Senator McCain, you can sit there and want to play nice with Barack Obama all day long, do you realize the people on this side, what they’re going to do to you as you’re playing nice? And your whole campaign’s going to be — every day you’re going to be damning somebody and telling them to repudiate what they just said. Every day you’re going to be talking about how you’re offended. ‘This is not the kind of campaign we need to be running. Please repudiate that. Please apologize.’ Like a New Age encounter group from the 1970s, is what this presidential campaign’s shaping up to be. This guy Obama, it has been learned now that his chief Internet blogger, whatever, led communist riots in France! These things cannot be coincidental.
Bill Ayers? A lot has been learned about what Bill Ayers is doing. This guy hasn’t repudiated any of his terrorism and violence in the past, but he’s now an accredited educator and he’s leading the charge in genuinely polluting the minds of American school kids, K-12 into college; on the evils of capitalism. Sol Stern, the Manhattan Institute, is writing about this. Stern doesn’t think it’s that big a deal, and I think it is. Anyway, these are the kind of people that Senator McCain is up against, and if he thinks he’s going to get a straightforward campaign… Senator McCain, if you think Obama’s going to be honest about what his intentions for the country are, so that you can knock them out of the park, I don’t know where you’re coming from. We’re just using intelligence guided by experience here. It gets worse. This is in New Orleans yesterday, at a press conference, Senator McCain talking about Hurricane Katrina.
MCCAIN: The people of the Ninth Ward, the people of New Orleans, the people of this country. Never again, never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled. Never again. (applause) Never again.
RUSH: He was talking about President Bush and the federal response. The local response sort of got a pass from Senator McCain.
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RUSH: We’ll start in Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina. Hello, Joe, and I’m glad you’re first up. Hello.
CALLER: Yes! It’s so nice to talk to you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Rush, even you do not — I don’t think you — understand how mad people in North Carolina are at him.
RUSH: Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
CALLER: I am absolutely livid. To claim that that ad is racist, to go down to New Orleans and pander to a group of people who have been on the dole for 60 years, and then to say that we’re out of touch with the Republican Party? If there’s anybody out —
RUSH: No!
CALLER: — of touch with the —
RUSH: No!
CALLER: — Republican Party, he is.
RUSH: You’re ‘out of touch with reality.’
CALLER: Yeah, well…
RUSH: Not just the Republican Party. You’re ‘out of touch with reality.’
CALLER: My reality, Rush, is that the only way we’re going to get control of this again is to do it on the local levels. Right now, whether he becomes president or not, I don’t care; because I don’t think I can vote for him, but I can vote for people for Congress and for the Senate who represent what I think and what I believe.
RUSH: Amen, bro. Let me ask you a question. I want to know how you really feel about one thing.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: No, no. I’m not trying to be funny.
CALLER: (laughing) Okay.
RUSH: I want you to tell us how you really feel when you hear Senator McCain say that he’s upset that the North Carolina Republicans are not listening to him, and that this ad is racist, and they should stop it because they’re ‘out of touch with reality.’ But the thing that really… He said you’re not listening to him.
CALLER: Well, if he would give me something to listen to that I could believe in, it would be something else. But, what is his name? Is it John ‘Reid-Pelosi’ McCain? Because it sounds to me like he’s a Democrat. If you’re going to talk like that, if you’re going to speak like that about us, then why don’t you just become a Democrat?
RUSH: This is not the way to unify your party.
CALLER: It’s not. It isn’t.
RUSH: This is not the way to unite the party behind your own campaign when you’re running for president.
CALLER: And he would have the opportunity if he would only learn from what’s going on. He could beat either one of these candidates, and he can do it as a conservative Republican, and he could get the country behind him to do it, but not the way that he’s going about it.
RUSH: Wait a minute. That’s not his experience, and we have to keep this in mind. McCain’s experience is succeeding not as a conservative. He thinks conservatives denied him the nomination in 2000. McCain sees his success as a ‘maverick,’ as making deals with Democrats. The media loves McCain. The Democrats loved McCain. That’s where he is, and he thinks because he can cross the aisle, sit across the aisle, whatever; that makes him bigger and better than simple partisans and so forth. So, no. He doesn’t look at conservatism as having anything to do with his success. Once you understand that — you don’t agree with it — you’ll understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. But you take a look. We all know the Republican Party has had trouble raising money for a long time. These state parties, I guarantee you, are gonna be rolling in contributions.
North Carolina is probably going to have to go out and open a couple of new bank accounts to handle all the money going in there because they are showing they understand what’s necessary to beat back the liberal opposition in this election. By the same token, Senator McCain is having trouble raising money, and it’s no wonder why. Now, the story in Wall Street Journal today by Kimberley Strassel, with details on how he’s having to circumvent his own campaign finance reform rules in order to go out and raise money. It’s just mind-boggling — and the 527s which exist solely because of McCain-Feingold? Now he wants everybody to stand down, all these 527s to stop it. I don’t know… I can’t relate to the ego, in one sense. I can’t relate to standing up and saying to both political parties, as though you’re Moses and have just come down from the mountain with the tablets, ‘Okay, here are the rules. Here are the proclamations. I’m delivering them to you. I want everybody to stand by them.’ I do not understand. I can’t relate to it –and as you people know, I have one of the healthiest egos known to exist in all humanity, but I can’t understand it.
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