RUSH: Now, there’s more melting down in the Obama campaign. Linda Douglass, we’ve told you about her, Linda Douglass used to work at ABC, and she used to work at NBC as a Drive-By Media journalist. She decided that she was not having enough impact for Obama as a Drive-By journalist so she said I’m leaving Drive-Byism and I am going to go work for Obama. So we have yet another member of the extreme left media abandoning the media to go to work for Obama as a spokesperson. She was on Joe Scarborough’s program on DNCTV this morning. Scarborough said, ‘Did Barack Obama mean to — put lipstick on a pig — that he was describing Sarah Palin?’
DOUGLASS: Absolutely categorically not. What is offensive about the way that the McCain campaign has reacted is once again they are making these ridiculous charges. First of all, this had nothing to do with Governor Palin, but secondly, they made a ridiculous charge that it had something to do with sexism. And I think that she should be embarrassed, and it is insulting to women that the McCain campaign keeps cynically grasping for some excuse to say that everything that is said about the ticket has something to do with sexism.
RUSH: Now, this is not the kind of spokesman and contribution that you get from a campaign that’s on the offense, that’s feeling confident. These people’s backs are against the wall, they don’t know what hit ’em. Here they are complaining about McCain and the Republicans using the lipstick comment when it was Obama who mentioned it. When it was Obama who said it. And it wasn’t just lipstick on a pig. It was also dead fish in newspaper that a lot of people think was aimed directly at McCain. So Scarborough said, ‘Will Barack Obama come out today to address these charges which seem to have taken on a life of their own over the last 12 hours?’
DOUGLASS: Charges? I mean what is the charge? You know —
SCARBOROUGH: The charge is sexism against Barack Obama. The New York Daily News, the New York Post, Drudge, a lot of the papers are talking about it. The attack and the charge is against your candidate, Barack Obama. Will he address these charges of sexism?
DOUGLASS: You’re saying that because Drudge and the New York Post are accusing the Democratic candidate of sexism, which is a completely ridiculous charge. Of course we’re not going to spend the day responding to something like that. Senator Obama is going to be out today, as he does every single day, talking to voters about how he’s going to improve education for children, make college more affordable, bring down gas prices, move us toward energy independence.
RUSH: He’s not going to be able to do any of those things. But Linda, Linda Douglass, as a former member of the Drive-Bys, and I’m sure you’ll be a member of the Drive-Bys again after the Obama campaign loses, you’ll go back to some network, what happened to this notion of the seriousness of the charge? Remember, Anita Hill had no evidence whatsoever against Clarence Thomas, but people like you, Ms. Douglass, why, you kept it all alive, you kept it alive by saying the seriousness of the charge, we have to investigate this. Tom Foley, when there was no evidence to support that George Bush 41 had been part of a plot with the Iranians to keep the American hostages in prison essentially ’til after the 1980 election, didn’t matter, there was no evidence, Foley said the seriousness of the charge demands that we investigate.
So what about the seriousness of the charge here, Ms. Douglass? It’s a pretty serious charge here that people are making, your candidate’s sexist and your candidate insulted Sarah Palin by calling her a pig? Serious charge, we gotta investigate this. We gotta talk about it. So then Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, on this program, she said, ‘Well, he comes out with a substantive education speech the same day the McCain campaign comes up with an ad slamming him for legislation, saying he wants to teach kindergarteners sex before they learn to read. They seem to be out-gaming the Democrats right now, how does Obama get back to the offensive?’
DOUGLASS: They have been running a consistently negative and deceptive ad campaign. You’re absolutely right about that, Andrea. There has been a barrage of negative, cynical, deceptive ads, and they are — you know, they really do fall into the category, as we’ve said yesterday, as dishonorable, these are dishonorable ads when you continually try to deceive the public in the most cynical ways about Senator Obama’s record. But he’s not going to waste his time responding, number one, to stories that loom up in the news media that don’t really have any foundation, and number two, all of the negative cynical typical Washington attacks that we’ve been getting from the John McCain campaign.
RUSH: Well, there’s only one problem here, Linda, he proved you wrong. He did go out and respond to it. Shortly after she appeared on MSNBC today, he went out and responded to it. She said, ‘He’s gonna go out, as he does every single day, talk to the voters about how he’s going to improve education for children.’ No, he’s not. He’s going to say we need to improve it, he’s not going to tell us how he’s going to do it because he has no clue. He has no clue, other than to teach kindergarteners sex education. He did sign that bill. He did vote for that bill, Linda. He’s also going to talk about making college more affordable. How is he going to do that? Is he going to call the university presidents and say, ‘Lower your tuitions?’ Remember, university presidents — liberal associates in the Democrat Party. If you guys are really upset about college tuition you’d be calling it Big University, Big Education, Big College and you’d be trashing them like you trash Big Oil. You’ll never do anything about this. All you’ll do is come up with more favorable student loans or more student loans or what have you. There’s never any pressure to lower tuition for people like Obama. Bring down gas prices?
How’s he going to bring down gas prices? In fact, Ms. Douglass, you should remember this. Obama said he wasn’t upset when gasoline peaked at over four dollars a gallon. The price didn’t bother him. What he said bothered him was how quickly the price rose. But he didn’t say the price bothered him. I haven’t heard him say he wants to get gas prices down, and he hasn’t the slightest clue how to do it. He can’t tell anybody how he’s going to do it because his plan does not include finding any new energy that could be converted into gasoline. You’ve got an empty suit candidate who can go out and speak all these platitudes, ‘We need to do that, we need to do this, we need to do that,’ but he doesn’t have any idea how to do it. Anybody, ladies and gentlemen, can go out and talk to a large group of people and tell ’em what’s wrong and have the crowd go nuts. ‘Yeah, you tell ’em!’ Not very many people can come up with actual solutions to these things. You know, part of I think Obama’s appeal way back in the early days of the campaign was that he went out and he identified what was upsetting and bothering people, and so they thought he was one of them, he was the one they’ve been waiting for. But after awhile you’ve got to do more than just relate, just say, ‘Yeah, I know you’re hurting and here’s what’s wrong.’ You gotta come up with solutions and poor old Obama doesn’t have any.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ben Smith at The Politico has updated his blog on this whole lipstick on a pig joke that Obama told. ‘The Obama campaign has been claiming that there was no intent to imply anything about Palin when he mentioned lipstick.’ And the McCain campaign is out there saying he called Palin a pig, actually called her a pig. That’s what this is really all about. So the Obama campaign’s denying that, but this little update now, ‘Though on a day when Obama’s surrogates were joking that Palin’s record can’t be concealed with lipstick, it was hard for those following the campaign not to hear the echo.’ Meaning Obama goes out and tells his lipstick pig joke, people think it’s about Palin. (doing Obama impression) ‘No, I was talking about economic policy.’ But his campaign’s out there after he makes the lipstick comment, telling people, joking, that Sarah Palin’s record can’t be concealed with lipstick.
So I think she got ’em discombobulated. She tells the lipstick joke, the lipstick pit bull joke and Obama, (paraphrasing) ‘I say this all the time, Washington Post says it all the time, McCain says it all the time, too.’ But I think this clearly gets to the intent. But, look, beyond the intent here, whether he intended to do it or not, it just isn’t presidential. The whole press conference or the whole appearance that he had yesterday was just undisciplined, directionless, there was no presence, he did not exude any presence or any command of the situation. I think he doesn’t have much and his mind starts wandering and he comes up with political cliches, and he’s trying to be a stand-up comedian. This is how street agitators get tough. You know, his supporters want him to toughen up; they want him to fight back. This is how street agitators do it.