RUSH: For me it boils down to, who do you trust? On this financial rescue thing, it boils down to, who do you trust? Let’s face it, folks, there are very few of us who can spend hours and hours and hours reading things about this, the rescue, and talking to people about it and still come away with anything approaching expert stats. So who do you trust? Do you trust the president in his speech last night? Do you trust Paulson? Do you trust Barney Frank? Do you trust Chris Dodd? Do you trust McCain? Do you trust Obama? Who do you trust here? I’ll tell you who you trust. You trust conservatism. You trust conservatism, and I’m gonna explain what I mean by that during the course of the program. This is one of these three-hour jobs today, they’re all three hours, but it’s going to take three hours to get all this done today. Don’t expect it all done in the first 15 or 20 minutes here. It’s just not possible. There’s so, so much going on out there from McCain pulling out of the debate — poor Obama, poor Obama, he doesn’t know what hit him. Look, of course this is politics and of course it’s a gimmick. But this is what McCain does. By the way, welcome. It’s the Rush Limbaugh program. The phone number, 800-282-2882.
When McCain sees an opportunity to, quote, unquote, rise above politics, he’s going to take it. And he’s done it here and of course old Barry is stuck down there in Clearwater prepping for the foreign policy debate tomorrow night, he basically says, ‘Yeah, call me if you need me,’ when McCain says, (paraphrasing) ‘Get yourself up here, we gotta work together on solving this financial crisis.’ ‘Well, call me if you need me.’ And then he goes out and says, (paraphrasing) ‘Hey, this was my idea. You know, I wanted a joint statement this morning, and McCain trumped me on this,’ and then he starts thinking we could still do the debate. Presidents ought to be able to do more than one thing at a time. Well, here’s Obama who apparently can’t do more than one thing at a time.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton — the Uncivil War is back in the Democrat Party — Bill Clinton is dropping neutron bombs all over the place against Obama and the campaign. No one’s dying, but the energy, the electricity has been knocked out of this campaign. Obama, I’m sure, I’m convinced now he did not know who he was messing with when he dissed Hillary for the vice presidential nomination. The Clintons, when they were no longer treated as the king and queen of the party, they went to war. Bill Clinton is on Good Morning America today admitting that the Democrats blocked reform of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Bill Clinton was on Good Morning America today praising McCain to the hilt. He’s blowing Obama and Democrats away on every television show he appears. He doesn’t say that Obama’s unfit, and he doesn’t say that he’s going to vote for McCain, but he does. Now, what does Bill care? Hillary is a senator; he’s a mutlimillionaire, got rich during the Bush years. Obama and Michelle are going to have to go through him if they want to get on that gravy train, and right now Obama’s gotta do more than two things at once, he has to go to Washington and he cannot vote ‘present.’ He did not want his vote on this. He did not want to be tied to it because he’s just one of 100 people in the Senate. He can’t control what they’re going to do, he’s just one vote, so he wants to vote present. He’s got people like Frank Raines and Jim Johnson on his staff who helped create this problem. He has to pretend to look presidential, as he follows McCain and Bush’s lead.
By the way, McCain spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative. I understand being polite, but you gotta understand, McCain was gushing in his praise for Clinton this morning, and I got a lot of e-mails, ‘Look, I understand, Rush, the need for him to be polite, but why in the world gush like that?’ Well, you gotta understand what Clinton is doing to Obama out there every chance he gets, folks. McCain is indebted to him here. I mean, there literally are neutron bombs being dropped all over poor Barry’s campaign here, and he has no clue. He doesn’t really know it, so he’s gotta pretend to look presidential as he follows McCain and Bush’s lead. Here was the Clinton Global Initiative, which is a joke, but it still happened there in New York, and McCain shows up in person and does his little speech and then hightails it back to Washington. We got Barry on video, a screen there on the stage ’cause he’s still in Clearwater, Florida, debate prepping. I’ve watched a little bit of it, and it looks like that he’s having teleprompter problems, but I don’t think that’s what it was, for those of you who saw it. I think Barry was waiting for the applause to die down when he thought there was going to be applause. He didn’t want his next comments to be overcome.
But have you ever noticed, folks, I finally figured out something. Every time Obama speaks, could be two people in the room, could be 200,000 out there in Berlin or whatever, he always looks like he’s looking over the horizon. He’s always looking away like this, as though there are the multitudes stretched so far that he has to look probably 45 degrees in the sky in order to be able to see ’em all. That’s a trick. You know how they’re doing it? They put the teleprompter above his eye level so he has to constantly look up, and it’s this looking up and looking around and so forth that makes it look like he’s addressing the multitudes that stretch from coast to coast. Barack Obama. He has to squirm wondering if there’s going to be a debate on Friday now. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen on that, by the way. I think after the meeting today at the White House, McCain will come out of there, Obama will come out of there, and McCain will say, ‘There’s been so much progress. We have come so close here to finalizing our deal, that I think our debate tomorrow night should take place on the economy,’ while Barry has not prepped. He’s been prepping on foreign policy.
I don’t know how much prep Barry has to do on foreign policy. His foreign policy is, we lose. His foreign policy is, meet with Ahmadinejad, with no preconditions. Did you see where Obama, one of his financial bundlers from Code Pink hosted a dinner for Ahmadinejad earlier this week in New York? Yes, Jodie Evans is her name and she’s Code Pink, Code Pink women for peace, these people are always getting into congressional hearings and protesting during the Iraq war testimony, generals show up and so forth. She was one of the bundlers of his big $9 million night in Hollywood, and Ahmadinejad, of course he’s going to meet with an anti-American crowd, and they showed up and she’s one of Obama’s bundlers. You have to wonder now, I mean we know who these people are, they’re kook fringe leftist anti-Americans, but they’re also Obama supporters, Obama bundlers, Obama fundraisers meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York to discuss the evils of the United States of America. Let’s go to the audio sound bites ’cause I don’t want to wait ’til the last hour today to go through them. This is two sound bites from Obama, yesterday in Clearwater, Florida. He held a little press conference. Unidentified reporter said, ‘Do you plan on attending the debate Friday? And is Senator McCain playing politics with this by saying he would not go to the debate?’
OBAMA: It’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess.
RUSH: Wrong, Barry.
OBAMA: And I think that it is, uh, it is going to be part of the president’s job —
RUSH: Yeah, yeah.
OBAMA: — to deal with more than one thing at once.
RUSH: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, Barry Obama wants to deal with more than one thing at once, an insult to McCain. McCain has dealt with more than one thing at once. While he was being tortured in the prisoner of war hotel over in Hanoi he was also able to recite the offensive line of the Green Bay Packers. Don’t talk to McCain, Barry, about doing two things at once. And, by the way, Barry, the new president is not going to be president in 40 days. That’s the election, doofus. Then an unidentified reporter said, ‘Are you going to stay here in Florida and prepare for the debate or are you thinking of going back to Washington?’
OBAMA: If I can be helpful, then I am prepared to be anywhere, any time. If you need us, if I can be helpful, I am prepared to be there at any point. Presidents are going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time. Uh, it’s not necessary for us to think that, uh, we can only do one thing, uh, and suspend everything else.
RUSH: Okay, so there’s the David Axelrod talking point, and that is, we have to be able to deal with more than one thing at a time. So he says essentially if congressional leadership needed him, he’d be available. Call me if you need me. Now, who is he? He’s the leader of his party right now, and he seemed to have absolutely no interest in being involved in this very important issue that’s being discussed up there. He does have a job, and his job right now is senator. That’s where he ought to be. Well, call me if you need me. Be glad to show up if you need me. Look, I’m too busy playing God here, I’m too busy being messiah, I’m too busy, call me if you need me, but really wish you’d handle this on your own. And then Harry Reid is out there saying, McCain, we don’t need you, stay away.
By the way, did you hear what Bob Schieffer reported about this today on CBS? Bob Schieffer said somebody told him — he was on the CBS Early Show this morning — he said that somebody told him that Hank Paulson called Senator Lindsey Grahamnesty after he met with the House Republicans yesterday, and only four of them said they would support the rescue plan. Paulson called Lindsey Grahamnesty and said you gotta get McCain up here. McCain is the only guy that can provide cover for these Republicans. You gotta get McCain up here talking to these guys. So Grahamnesty called McCain, and that’s how McCain ended up, according to CBS News, that’s how McCain ended up going to Washington. It was not, therefore, a stunt that they contrived out of whole cloth. There was a request from the Treasury Secretary to McCain, not to Obama. I don’t know why Paulson just didn’t call McCain himself, he called Lindsey Grahamnesty, but that’s what Bob Schieffer said. Now, let’s go some Bill Clinton neutron bombs. This is Good Morning America today, cohost Chris Cuomo, ‘Delaying the debate, McCain, a good move?’
CLINTON: We know he didn’t do it because he’s afraid because Senator McCain wanted more debates. You could put it off a few days, the problem is it’s hard to reschedule those things. I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted, I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country so I don’t think we ought to overly parse that.
RUSH: You heard it. Neutron bomb number one. Bill Clinton, he just threw Obama under the bus. Here’s Bill Clinton saying, (doing Clinton impression) ‘Hey, look, he’s the guy that wanted all those town hall meetings, he wanted ten of them and I didn’t hear the other guy say, ‘Okay, I’ll be there.’ I mean, McCain, he’s not afraid to debate.’ Let me tell you something about these debates, too, folks. These debates, they’re phony. They’re total media creations. What happens in a debate? Okay, these two guys show up someplace, they stand at lecterns, and you have three or four selected elites from the Drive-By Media get to ask the questions, therefore frame the whole debate. The candidates don’t. After it’s over, the Drive-Bys then head to the spin room, where various representatives of both candidates tell the Drive-Bys what they didn’t hear but that they wanted them to hear, and then the Drive-Bys tell us after all that what they heard that they wanted us to hear, defying our own eyes and what we saw.
They tell us, you didn’t see what you saw, Obama kicked butt tonight. If you think McCain did, it’s not going to happen that way. Media front-to-back. That is why the Saddleback Church thing was so great. There was no media in it. There was no pre-media, there was no post-media, there was no spin — well, a little spin room out there, I think, but it wasn’t typical. So this is no great loss. This is McCain going straight over the media to the voters a la the way Reagan did, and that’s what they’re doing with Sarah Palin. All right, one more Bill Clinton neutron bomb also from Good Morning America. Chris Cuomo says, ‘Is it a little surprising to you hearing the Democrats saying this came out of nowhere? I mean this is all the Republicans, Pelosi saying it? She knew what was going on in the SEC. They’re all sophisticated people. Is that playing politics in this situation?’
CLINTON: The responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans and the Congress or by me when I was president to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
RUSH: This is the guy that caused the problem. This is the guy that caused the problem. But notice what he’s doing. He’s not just neutron bombing Obama. He’s neutron bombing the Democrats. (doing Clinton impression) ‘The Democrats, I mean, the Republicans really wanted to reform this. I did, too, but my party stood in the way of this. I wanted to tighten them up a little bit there, but the Democrats, they wouldn’t go along.’ Neutron bombs, Bill Clinton. This is typical of Clinton to say, ‘I tried to, I did everything I could, I never worked harder at anything I ever did to try to straighten out this mess. But they wouldn’t listen to me.’ (laughing) You have to laugh, and we will continue to do so, folks, because we are Americans.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: In Obama’s response to McCain’s announcement yesterday, he kept mentioning a ‘joint statement’ that he thought was something important.
Yeah, that’s big! That’s really big. He wanted to put out a joint statement. See, that way, he could pretend that he’s not partisan, except joint statements aren’t the same as getting legislation passed. Joint statements don’t do anything. They are typical of Obama, who doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t take a stand on anything because he doesn’t want to have to explain it later on. A joint statement is a symbolic gesture that means nothing, a good way to define Obama. It’s perfect for him. He wanted to pretend he was a rainmaker. He wanted to pretend he was a leader who could get things down. Whether you agree with what’s about to happen here, and it does boil down to who you trust in all this, McCain and Bush acted like leaders.
Obama acted like a poser. He had this little meaningless joint statement here. Little Barry didn’t think he was needed in Washington. ‘Call me if you need me.’ (laughing) Call me! He’s only the leader of his party. The debate is taking place where he has a job. Call me if you need me? This is the kind of guy who thinks a treaty has the weight of a peace imposed by winning a war. This is a guy who thinks he can sit down, talk to Ahmadinejad, issue a joint statement, and poof! Iran’s no more an enemy. He’s a man-child, my friends. He doesn’t understand that a failure to quickly solve a credit crisis risks long-term damage to countless Americans. He said we could call him on the phone if he was needed. (laughing)
You talk about callous, talk about not having the judgment to lead. Sounds like a guy who would remain an active member of a racist church for 20 years and not knowing what’s going on in there. He’s not in touch with reality. He doesn’t get it. He still has Jim Johnson advising his campaign from Fannie Mae. How about a joint statement on why Jim Johnson’s advising your campaign, Barry? Why don’t you put out a statement explaining that? I want to go back. Snerdley was paralyzed for three minutes after this Clinton bit. One more time. Chris Cuomo: ‘All these Democrats saying that this problem, financial problem, is all the Republicans’ fault. What do you say to that?’
CLINTON: The responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans and the Congress or by me when I was president —
RUSH: Jeez!
CLINTON: — to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
RUSH: (laughter) Look, pal, you caused this! This is all traceable to the Democrats resisting oversight, resisting reform, creating the mechanisms in the first place, traceable right to you and Jimmy Carter. But he’s dumping on his party, I’m telling you, this guy is mad at the party leaders. He’s mad. He thinks Obama’s going to lose, and he and Hillary are going to pick it all back up.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, audio sound bites, Bill Clinton, he dropped neutron bombs today on the Obama campaign. I treated you to those sound bites in the first hour. He was on Larry King Live last night. Clinton is everywhere because of the Clinton Global Initiative. And Larry King said, ‘You’re going to vigorously campaign? Is that a correct word: ‘vigorous?”
CLINTON: We have this golden issue coming up, and I — and I have projects all over the world. When this is over — and after the Jewish holidays, which follow close on it — I intend to go to Florida, to Ohio, to northeast Pennsylvania, and to Nevada, at a minimum. I may do this in Arkansas, depending on what the Democratic Party does down there. And I have agreed to do some fundraising for them in California and New York.
RUSH: So he’s going to vigorously campaign for Obama after the Jewish holidays. Hey, why don’t you take Alcee Hastings with you? You know, it might help you out, because he’s out there and he’s got the proper message for Jewish voters: Any woman who goes out there and skins a moose and runs around with guns, you can never tell what she’s going to do to Jews and blacks. He said it. I’m paraphrasing it, but that’s pretty close. Clinton is destroying Obama, and I don’t even think Obama knows it. ‘Oh, yeah, you know something? Democrats, most of them are to blame for this meltdown here ’cause they were not looking. I mean, I tried everything I could to get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac straightened out, but the culpability of my party is huge. Oh, yeah! I think that McCain canceling the debate? That’s no big deal. McCain is a guy that invited Obama to ten different town hall meetings. Obama is the one who said no. I don’t think McCain’s got a problem here at all. That debate will happen. This bailout is clearly more important.’ These are neutron bombs. I mean, the buildings are left, nobody dies or any of that, but I’m telling you. The Clintons are peeved. Barry did not know who he was dealing with when he dissed them the way that he did. Here, by the way, more from Clinton on Larry King Live. King said, ‘Are you kind of feeling Jewish that you’re waiting ’til after the Jewish holidays?’
CLINTON: No, but I think it would be — if we’re trying to win in Florida —
KING: (snickers)
CLINTON: — it may be that, you know, they think that because of who I am and where my political base has traditionally been, they may want me to sort of hustle up what Lawton Chiles used to call ‘the cracker vote’ there.
RUSH: So here’s a guy claiming that he’s going to campaign for Obama. ‘Yeah, I’m gotta wait ’til the Jewish holidays are over so I can go in there, get the cracker vote for Obama.’ (laughing) Neutron bomb number three. ‘Hustle up the cracker vote! Gotta hustle up the cracker vote.’ So this is neutron bomb number three, and Clinton set this up perfectly. He knew that if he said he was going to do the campaign after the Jewish holidays, King would ask, ‘Whoa, what are you feeling Jewish? Why wait until after the Jewish holidays?’ ‘Well, I gotta go down there in Florida. They’re gonna need me down there to hustle up the cracker vote. I’m campaigning for Barack Obama, gonna need the cracker vote.’ (laughing) Yeah. By the way, the Drive-Bys are all upset that the debate was delayed. Suzanne Malveaux today on the American Morning show on CNN.
MALVEAUX: More than five million dollars for the university has been poured into making this debate happen. I want to show you here in the, uh, local paper, uh, one of the, uh, commentators, uh, essentially saying that, look, uh, she says this is not Southern manners; that he’s misplaced in his Southern manners, and here manners means a lot.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah. (laughing) So, CNN is all concerned now about what the Southerners think. For the first time in probably I don’t know how long, CNN actually cares what a Southern state and its population thinks about something! I guess Southerners, their feelings are never hurt when you guys at CNN insult them as a bunch of crackers or hayseed hicks. Remember, these debates are nothing more than media creations. They are media events. The more the candidates have a chance to go over the head of the media and right to the voters, as McCain and Palin are doing here, the better off they always are. It’s just great the media doesn’t like this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, I just got a note from a friend who properly observes that if Clinton is going to campaign here in Florida after the Jewish holidays, it would then follow logically that Clinton was seeking the ‘matzo ball’ vote rather than the ‘cracker’ vote. But he stuck with the cracker vote, because it’s a Southern state and the crackers are what Obama needs. My theory on this is that he’s saying exactly what he intends to say.
He’s dropping little neutron bombs on Obama and the campaign. He’s going to come down here to Florida, because Obama is going to need the cracker vote, and so the guy who is ostensibly campaigning is going to say, ‘Hey, crackers? I’m coming down here to get your vote.’ Now, Clinton may have to say, ‘Hey, I’m a fellow cracker (laughing) so I know exactly what you people want.’ (interruption) According to whose…? Crackers are native born Floridians, that was Lawton Chiles’ definition? Is that…? Well, now look. That’s another thing. How do we know? Lawton Chiles has assumed room temperature many years ago. So that’s another thing. Poor old Lawton Chiles. Who’s put all these words in Lawton Chiles’ mouth? I don’t doubt that Lawton Chiles said it.
Get this. My earlier theory has been confirmed, ladies and gentlemen.