RUSH: Jim Geraghty, National Review Online at his blog called The Campaign Spot. I’ve been telling you over the past couple days that (it’s obvious to me) — in fact, all week — that there is Panic City setting in in the Democrat Party and the Obama campaign.
This was not how this was envisioned even as little as two weeks ago, but certainly not two months ago. They were just riding on the top of this wave of messiah sort of belief about Obama and it’s all crumbled. McCain is ahead in some polls, tied in all of the others. Barry’s lead is gone. They’re all asking, ‘Where is the mojo and how’s he going to get his mojo back?’ So Geraghty writes about this today. ‘Over the past few weeks I’ve heard from folks who work in the other media and in GOP circles that team Obama was variously frustrated, scared, angry, panicking, et cetera. I didn’t put a whole lot of stock in it. There wasn’t a lot of outward signs of panic that I could see, but in the past few days we have seen three separate signs of panic.
‘First, in Virginia a moment ago, Obama deployed a variation of his comments in San Francisco: ‘Now, you want to win. And saying it doesn’t make it so,’ he told the crowd. ‘It would be nice to think that after eight years of economic disaster, after eight years of bungled foreign policy, of being engaged in a war that should never have been authorized and should never have been waged, that cost us a trillion dollars and thousands of lives, that people would say, let’s toss the bums out. Toss the bums out, we’re starting from scratch, we’re starting over. This is not working. So I understand why a lot of folks are saying, this should just happen. Why are we having to run all these television commercials? Why do we have to raise all this money? Just read the papers. These are the knuckleheads who have been in charge. Throw ’em out. But American politics aren’t that simple,’ he said.”
I detect with that comment that he’s getting tired of having to campaign. This whole notion having a campaign he thinks is beneath him now, which is exactly the way the Clintons portrayed themselves when they rode into town in 1992 and 1993. They wanted people to bend down — not look at ’em, bend down — bow, but don’t dare cast your eyes on the king and queen who had come to rescue America from all the horrors of the Bush administration. ‘On [radio] a moment ago, Obama said, ‘It would be great if the country said, ‘Let’s throw the bums out,’ and I didn’t have to campaign.” So, he’s getting bummed out out there, folks, that he’s having to do all this minutia in order to get to his kingdom. He’s really bent out of shape about it. The wheels are continuing to come off.
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RUSH: We have here, ladies and gentlemen, a montage of Drive-Bys beside themselves that the mean, nasty Republicans are attacking one of their candidates in August.
REYNOLDS: The McCain campaign continues to run ads attacking Obama on a personal level, belittling him as a shallow celebrity and describing him as fussy, hysterical, or testy.
BROWN: The attacks are working.
TODD: The negative campaign, it’s been effective for McCain.
CAFFERTY: McCain’s negative ads, those Paris Hilton/Britney Spears seem to have resonated.
LUNTZ: The McCain criticisms have been working.
WALSH: McCain has been running a really negative campaign. He’s attacking his patriotism. The problem is it’s working.
MATTHEWS: I’ve seen this campaign before, it was 1988. He wouldn’t support the pledge of allegiance in the classroom. What’s his problem with the flag?
KING: Another lost August for the Democrats.
RUSH: Yeah, don’t forget now the Drive-Bys had the story yesterday in the Boston Globe, why do all these Democrats have their patriotism questioned? Another lost August for the Democrats. (laughing) It’s because of who you people nominate! Matthews was saying last night on his show he’s very worried. He sees a rerun here of Dukakis in 1988, the loser, had all this big poll lead coming out of the convention and Bush 41 caught him and so forth, did the stupid things like posing as Beetle Bailey in the tank and a number of other things.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ve been mentioning all day long and in the last two or three days about the panic that has set in on the Obama campaign. David ‘Rodham’ Gergen writing at Anderson Cooper’s blog on CNN: ‘Obama in Need of a Game Changer.’ Wha..? Wha…? What is this? The Messiah ‘in need of a game changer’? What this is all about is Gergen. He doesn’t say in this piece that Obama is in charge of the success of his campaign. Obama needs somebody to save him. Obama is not strong enough on his own to get this done. He needs a game changer. He needs a vice presidential pick. He needs something. This is amazing! The liberals are freaked out now. He is so weak. They are advising him on how to appear to be something he’s not — which is strong and confident without a teleprompter.
Now here’s Joe Klein in TIME Magazine, ‘Where’s Obama’s Passion?’ When Joe Klein has to take over your campaign for the for the presidency, you are in a problem. Here’s Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle: ‘Bad News Should Wake Up Obama, Experts Say — It’s not panic time — yet — but some Democrats watching Barack Obama say his campaign should have gotten a wake-up call this week, not only from his appearance with John McCain at the Saddleback Church but from a major poll suggesting he no longer leads his GOP opponent,’ and Carla goes out here and quotes George Lakoff (rhymes with) who talks about how perfect McCain was at the Saddlesore Church and how horrible Obama was, and Obama needs to wake up.
And then from the Washington Prowler today at the American Spectator website: ‘According to several Democrat political consultants presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama spent part of his Hawaiian vacation working on weaning himself from a heavy dependence on teleprompters. Even in what are staged as ‘town hall’ events for Obama, remarks are scripted or formatted into bullet points that scroll on teleprompter screens. Obama has had several embarrassing events where the teleprompter either malfunctioned or the screens were not fully visible,’ and he freezes up! ”He just locks down and can’t get the words out,’ says one political consultant. ‘For such a fine speaker, it’s really quite remarkable that he’s had issues.” He’s not a fine speaker. He’s a fine reader.
Talk about ‘chickens coming home to roost’ and buyer’s remorse: This is Santa Cruz Sentinel — ‘Leon Panetta says Obama needs to be more forceful to beat McCain, time to put some more meat on the bones.’ Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign is the one that’s going negative out there, and of course the Drive-Bys circle their wagons. ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God! McCain’s going negative! His going negative is working. Oh, no, another blown August for Democrats!’ It’s almost applicable.