Hillary Follows Rush’s Advice on Disenfranchisement, Voting Rights

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, here is Jonathan Chait at the New Republic blog. ‘Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric today about counting the results in Florida and Michigan is simply incredible. Her speech compares discounting the Florida and Michigan primaries to vote suppression and slavery.’ It’s worth repeating. They supported this disenfranchisement. Also at Politico.com, the Ben Smith blog: ‘Hillary Clinton compared her effort to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to epic American struggles, including those to free the slaves and win the right to vote for blacks and women.’ I want to take you back to this program, May the 7th. This is May 22nd. We’re going to go back 15 days. This is a little over two weeks. The Drive-Bys listening to Mrs. Clinton are apoplectic about what she’s saying. Operation Chaos claims another success. I have three bites of me on this program from May 7th.

RUSH ARCHIVE: The Democrat Party is willing to disenfranchise voters of all stripes from two large states in order to end the chaos that is their party nomination process. As I say, not since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have we witnessed such a large-scale effort to obstruct the vote. The Democrat Party up to its old tricks. The party of slavery, the party of segregation, the party of poll taxes is now the party of disenfranchisement in Michigan and in Florida.

RUSH: This stated by me, you just heard it from May 7th. Here’s Mrs. Clinton yesterday in Boca Raton.

HILLARY: In each successive generation, this nation was blessed by men and women who refused to accept their assigned place as second-class citizens. The abolitionists and all who fought to end slavery and ensure freedom came with the full rights of citizenship. The tenacious women and a few brave men who gathered at the Seneca Falls convention back in 1848 to demand the right to vote. The men and women who knew their constitutional right to vote meant little when poll taxes and literacy tests, violence and intimidation made it impossible to exercise their right. So they marched and protested, faced dogs and tear gas, knelt down on that bridge in Selma to pray and were beaten within an inch of their lives.

RUSH: Wow, ladies and gentlemen, my advice offered here to the Clinton campaign on May 7th has finally been taken. Here is more of me on May 7th saying this about Mrs. Clinton.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Mrs. Clinton needs to demand counting the popular vote in Michigan and Florida. She needs to demand this. She then perhaps should do what liberals always do in the end and take the whole matter to court. As for the votes in Michigan and Florida, I have a question: Will the Democrat Party become the party of disenfranchisement? Will it become the party that denies millions of people the right to participate in their own electoral process? Will it become the party where some votes count more than others? Will the Democrat Party become the party of backroom deals? The Justice Department civil rights division should investigate the Democrat Party’s rules, and Mrs. Clinton should call for this. Those rules disenfranchise millions of voters, including minority voters in Michigan and Florida, and the Democrats are very concerned about the minority vote, and there’s a bunch of minorities in Florida and Michigan whose votes are not going to matter a hill of beans to the nomination process. I also have a little aside for those of you women who are supporting Hillary Clinton in this process of backroom deals. You are about to get screwed. The Democrat Party is aiming to make as many people — this is unintentional — unhappy and miserable as they can.

RUSH: Yesterday in Boca Raton, Mrs. Clinton.

HILLARY: People have fought hard because they knew their vote was at stake and so was their children’s futures. Because of those who have come before, Senator Obama and I and so many of you have this precious right today. Because of all that has been done, we are in this historic presidential election, and I believe that both Senator Obama and myself have an obligation as potential Democratic nominees. In fact, we all have an obligation as Democrats to carry on this legacy and ensure that in our nominating process, every voice is heard and every single vote is counted.

RUSH: Yay! And again, we go back to me on this program May the 7th.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I thought that we as a nation had put all this behind us. Where is the civil rights division of the Justice Department? Where are the House and Senate judiciary committees? Why are there no investigations? Why are there no demands for investigations? The closest we’ve come to examining the undemocratic process of the nomination of the Democrat Party nominee is an episode of Boston Legal last week in which the Democrat Party was sued over its rules. The party won. But it was the first exposure in mass media of the entirely undemocratic process. I realize they’re a private group, private organization, they can set their rules up, but what’s the name of the party? They call themselves Democrats. There is nothing democratic about their nomination process, as is evidenced now, not only by the existence of their superdelegates, the party hacks who will be making this decision behind closed doors, smoke-filled rooms and so forth, then denying two states their right to be seated at the Democrat National Convention. And again, we’re not talking about small states; we’re talking about Florida and Michigan. We’re about to witness the most egregious assault on voting rights since the 1960s. Howard Dean, as the chairman of the Democrat National Committee, Howard Dean is responsible for this. Howard Dean is in charge of the process. He is the George Wallace of our time. Howard Dean is standing in the way of counting the votes from Florida and Michigan.

RUSH: Now, remember, these three sound bites you’re hearing of me, these were all aimed at the Clinton campaign. I was addressing the Clinton campaign and urging them not to sit down, to stand up and fight, to count Florida and Michigan, to stop the disenfranchisement and going back and comparing it, the poll taxes and the Democrat Party being the party of poll taxes, and of course greatest violation of the Voting Rights Act since 1965. Mrs. Clinton one more time from Boca Raton yesterday.

HILLARY: We believe the popular vote is the truest expression of your will. We believe it today just as we believed it back in 2000 when right here in Florida you learned the hard way what happens when your votes aren’t counted and the candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner. The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal clear: If any votes aren’t counted, the will of the people isn’t realized and our democracy is diminished. You didn’t break a single rule, and you should not be punished for matters beyond your control.

RUSH: Yes, yes. Shouting, count the votes, count the votes, count the votes. So you see what happened here. On May 7th, I, El Rushbo, the commander-in-chief of US Operation Chaos, suggested to the Clintons that they not give up Florida and Michigan and that they attack this on the basis of disenfranchisement. Not since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have we seen this kind of denial of the democratic process to so many voting Americans including minorities in Florida and Michigan. And beginning early this week the Clinton campaign followed my advice. Earlier this week we had sound bites of Howard Wolfson, spokesman, and The Punk, Terry McAuliffe, both using the word disenfranchisement to talk about what’s happening with Florida and Michigan. Now, the Drive-By Media is trying to ignore Hillary’s argument here, but CNN’s Gloria Borger picked up on it. Last night on CNN’s Election Center the hostette, Campbell Brown, talked with Gloria Borger about all this. And Campbell Brown said, ‘Earlier today, Senator Clinton told the AP she might take this Florida battle all the way to the convention.’

BORGER: She started making counting votes in Florida and Michigan a civil rights issue. She’s talked about abolitionists and suffragettes and counting your vote, and that’s what she worked for as a young student. And so she’s kind of made this an issue larger than Florida and Michigan, and if she feels that the results of that May 31 meeting of the rules committee doesn’t turn the out the way she wants it, it’s going to be hard for her to climb down off that tree.

RUSH: This is just amazing. This is frankly just amazing. I’m waiting for the next round of reporters to accuse me of tampering with our precious electoral process and accuse me of altering the outcomes. Here is Mrs. Clinton from Sunday, Bowling Green, Kentucky, she said this to the Washington Post.

HILLARY: The manifestation of some of the sexism that has gone on in this campaign is somehow more respectable, or at least more accepted. And I think there should be equal rejection of the sexism and the racism when and if it ever raises its ugly head. But it does seem as though the press, at least, is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments and reactions of people who are nothing but misogynists.

RUSH: Nothing but misogynists. And so also part of that monologue on May 7th, ladies and gentlemen, was an appeal to Mrs. Clinton and to the women of the Democrat Party that they were going to get screwed, politically, of course. They’re being shafted here, politically, of course, in a number of ways, in favor of a young black guy with no experience, better looking guy, remember I made an appeal to women. It’s all coming out. They’re using it now in their own ways, but the premise of Operation Chaos to keep this going has been picked up by the Clinton campaign successfully.