RUSH: I want to get to the Wall Street Journal op-ed today that I told you was coming yesterday. We’ve linked to it at RushLimbaugh.com, if you haven’t seen it. I want to thank everybody who has written me kudos about this, not just you from the audience, but several friends of mine in the conservative media, just all over the place, the response has been heartwarming. The real bottom line, I’ll tell you what I think this is. The purpose of this Spanish-language ad was in part to distort what I had said and what McCain’s views on illegal immigration are. But I actually think that there was an attempt by the Obama people — and this is not my ego speaking — I’m analyzing this politically. I really think that part of what they hoped was that McCain would race to the microphones and denounce me, thereby marginalizing me as a commentator, participant, what have you, in the remaining days of the election. This is why the rapid response. I had to go to the airport, four o’clock wheels up on Wednesday afternoon for Austin, and I was responding to these reporters and getting the truth out there.
We actually started it before the program was over. We started researching here what I had actually said and how it had been lifted out of context. We found the Morning Update from 2006. It took us a little while to find it, the NAFTA comments, a transcript of a radio show in 1993 responding to a caller. But it wasn’t until I was in the air on the way to Austin that I was able to get this information to these reporters. We were doing e-mails and firing all this stuff out at 49,000 feet, folks, and I got the computer out there, and HR, he’s going with me, and he’s sitting to my left, and every time we got a favorable response at Politico or Jake Tapper, whatever, I said, ‘Okay, this is working. Our version of this is getting out there now.’ A lot of people don’t think rapid response is called for because it’s defensive. Well, sometimes if they’re lying about you, it depends on the degree and what’s happening, what the stakes are. In this case I couldn’t sit around and let this go because I’ve been through this too much. The whole distortion of the Donovan McNabb thing, the Michael J. Fox situation, both of those are fabulous examples of exactly what Obama tried here, and this is a tactic of the left and I’ve been used to it because I’ve been victimized by it so damn much I can recognize it before it even shows up.
So when I saw this ad, I’m sitting here, ‘Wait a minute, I didn’t say that. I know I didn’t say that this way,’ just knew it. So the research began and we were able to dig it out. Folks, it’s paramountly obvious here. Any candidate like Barack Obama who employs the tactics of the old segregationists of the fifties and sixties is unworthy of the presidency. Barack Obama is stoking racism. He personally is doing it. And of course he knows it well. One of his mentors is a flaming, out-of-control, reactionary, radical racist Jeremiah Wright. He and his wife have learned it well. They know exactly how to do it, and he got his training as a Chicago street thug, community organizer. He gets people out of the way. He has a history of getting his opponents off the ballot or out of the way. So anyway, all well that ends well. We even have some Drive-By Media commentary on this. I’ll show you the value of rapid response. Last night, Hardball, a montage of correspondent David Shuster’s report.
SHUSTER: Obama, though, is also running a false ad, and this one is on Spanish television. (speaking Spanish) The spot quotes Rush Limbaugh saying Mexicans are stupid and unqualified. The narrator then says John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces, one that lies to get your vote and another that continues the failed policies of George Bush. The problem is that John McCain and Rush Limbaugh don’t agree on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform. And today a McCain campaign spokesperson said, ‘It is offensive and dishonest for Barack Obama to lie.’
RUSH: Now, in that case Shuster does not get the truth out about how my comments were lifted and taken out of context, but he does get right that McCain and I don’t have any agreement on this issue at all other than, you know, as I write in the piece I’m gratified that McCain has now come out and said that he’s for securing the borders first before trying anything else. This is Howie Kurtz last night on CNN.
KURTZ: The commercial talks about intolerance, making Hispanics feel marginalized in this country we love so much. But he puts up quotes about Rush Limbaugh about, ‘stupid and unskilled Mexicans.’ But the Arizona Senator bucked his own party in pushing legislation to create a path to citizenship for those here illegally, and the Limbaugh comments are tape out of context. During the NAFTA debate 15 years ago, he wasn’t talking about immigrants, he was saying that uneducated and unskilled Americans would lose their jobs to stupid and unskilled Mexicans working in Mexico, and Limbaugh, by the way, was one of McCain’s loudest critics during the primaries.
RUSH: So they’re nailing this ad. The bottom line is they’re nailing this ad. Last night, CNN, Anderson Cooper 180 talking with Candy Crowley. ‘Spanish-language ads linking McCain and Limbaugh have been directly pointed out as being unfair.’
CROWLEY: Absolutely, and — and directly wrong. I mean there have been several people that have looked at this ad and compared it to the actual record. Rush Limbaugh was taken out of context, the tie between Rush Limbaugh and John McCain is nonexistent, and yet that’s what this ad is.
COOPER: Yeah, as I recall, Rush Limbaugh was not a big fan of John McCain for a long time, as I recall.
CROWLEY: Absolutely.
RUSH: Yeah, so this is why rapid response works. Here’s last night Wolf Blitzer, elitist member of the media, as described by Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, talking with Buffalo Bill Bennett, and Wolf said, ‘It’s a pretty tough ad.’ (interruption) Well, Buffalo’s in part of his e-mail address. Like I have a friend named Al, and his e-mail address, Uncle Big Al, whatever and so forth. A couple I know, Penny and Richard, they call themselves ‘Penrich.’ That’s what I call them. If you’re going to have an e-mail address that has that, then that’s how I’m going to address you. Anyway, here Bill Bennett, and Wolf said, ‘It’s a pretty tough ad basically suggesting that McCain and Limbaugh are now partners in this anti-immigration mood out there. It’s a pretty tough ad.’
BENNETT: There are two people who had diametrically opposed views on immigration. It was Rush Limbaugh and John McCain. To be linking those two, this was probably Rush Limbaugh’s least favorite presidential candidate. So I mean I know people love to hate Rush Limbaugh, my friend, but this is scurrilous and ridiculous.
RUSH: They also had The Forehead last night, Paul Begala with Blitzer and this is what Begala said.
BEGALA: Limbaugh and McCain had opposed views, and that is true, but now McCain has come round to the Limbaugh point of view. Apparently Limbaugh, since the passing of Jerry Falwell, is the most important person in the Republican Party, it’s perfectly fair because fact is today, because of pressure from the right and Limbaugh, McCain has the same position on immigration as Rush Limbaugh.
RUSH: He does not. But here’s a campaign operative, The Forehead, doing what campaign operatives do, and that’s rip McCain. There’s no similarity to McCain and me on the immigration issue. One thing he has moderated on is he’s for open boarders now, securing the border, rather, before starting anything else. But anyway, let’s see. Well, one more. Here’s Contessa Brewer of MSNBC talking to Democrat strategerist Keith Boykin. Now, this is another lib defending the ad even though he can’t understand it.
BREWER: Obama’s campaign is trying to tie talker, radio talker Rush Limbaugh and John McCain to the same immigration policies. So here it is in Spanish, trying to reach out no another pivotal bloc of voters, and Keith, it’s wrong. Rush Limbaugh and John McCain do not have at all the same stance on immigration.
BOYKIN: Well, I have to say, I couldn’t hear the ad because it was in Spanish but I’ll tell you this much, John McCain’s position on immigration has changed. He flip-flopped on the issue. Last year he was in favor of an immigration bill that this year he said he wouldn’t even vote for. So I can’t say that ad is wrong because we don’t know where John McCain is.
RUSH: That is not what he said. He said he would vote for it again but he knows that it doesn’t have a chance. He has not moderated on this but he’s trying to say that he has. It isn’t gonna work, none of this is gonna work and on Monday, just to let you know, all of this that I have said, monologues, the 2006 Morning Update from which they lifted the quotes out of context, we’re going to have a Spanish-speaking gentleman say everything I have said about this on Monday in Spanish, not just to the four states Obama’s running this pathetic ad, but across the fruited plain.