RUSH: Here are a couple sound bites from John Boehner and Roy Blunt, the Republican leaders, at a little press conference when they came out of a meeting of their conference. Boehner first.
BOEHNER: I don’t know what games were being played at the White House yesterday. They gang up on Boehner. But if they thought they were rolling me, they were kidding themselves.
RUSH: I know exactly what happened, and so does he. He’s respecting the request not to talk about it, but he was the focus of this. Look, Boehner shows up along with the Democrats — Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and so forth. If you’re just hearing this for the first time, Obama shows up after having been briefed by friends of the Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, at Goldman Sachs. Obama did not know what the Republican position on this was. He had to be briefed. All the Democrats in the White House meeting deferred to Obama, letting him speak for them. The objective was to set this up as, ‘Obama walked in, took over the meeting, got it all done, was dynamic,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The first thing Obama did was repeat the talking points he’d been sent. ‘The Republicans in the House are the problem here, right?’ he asked Paulson. That’s what Boehner means by being ‘ganged up on,’ because everybody knows what conservatives believe and what they are, and there was no surprise here. There was never any deal. So that caused the meeting to go south. The meeting was lost. Obama blew it with his incompetence. Here’s Roy Blunt.
BLUNT: Clearly the Democrats have a majority in both houses of the Congress. If they want to do this by themselves, they can do this by themselves any minute they want to. If they want to do this with us, we’re prepared to have that negotiation.
RUSH: Apparently they’re not even talking to them. That’s Roy Blunt from Missouri. It’s his son that’s the governor in Missouri, Matt Blunt. That’s fascinating. He’s agreeing with my sentiments here: They can do this all by themselves. They can drill for oil all by themselves! There’s a whole bunch of stuff they could do by themselves but they’re not doing it.
All right, Rasmussen daily tracking poll. Sandy in Chicago, you’re not going to like this. But it’s the news. ‘Daily Rasmussen tracking poll Friday,’ today, ‘shows Barack Obama attracting 50% of the vote, McCain earns 45. This is Obama’s biggest lead since his convention bounce peaked with a six-point advantage. New data shows McCain’s lead is down to a single percentage point in Ohio and Florida. He leads by eight in West Virginia. Obama with a modest advantage in Pennsylvania. Virginia update released later. Obama now leads by five among unaffiliated voters. Last week, the unaffiliated voters were leaning in McCain’s direction. Stunning,’ says Rasmussen, ‘to note how rapidly the dynamics of the campaign have changed. Two weeks ago, just before the Wall Street financial crunch became visible, McCain was up by three points in the aftermath of his convention. A week ago today, the candidates were even. Now Obama’s lead is approaching new highs.’
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RUSH: Purely anecdotal, but most of the callers that are really upset and complaining about this, all this going on, are women today, which I like, don’t misunderstand, and they get it. They are informed. Here’s the phone number: 800-282-2882. E-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
Ladies and gentlemen, a Senate source said here at the top of the hour to expect a Senate bill to be out by midnight tonight. Now, that’s interesting. We all know who runs the Senate, Dingy Harry. If there’s a Senate bill out by midnight, that’s a little bit before Senator McCain can get back to Washington — he-he-he — to help participate in getting it done. Now, in regard to this bill coming out, the Senate version of the bill coming out, a lot of you are already calling and e-mailing members of Congress and the Senate. There is a system in place that was started during the Clinton years, whereas all legislation that has been passed by the House gets posted on the Internet so anybody and everybody can read it prior to the president signing it. It’s called the Thomas System. This obligation needs to be hammered. This rescue plan, when it finally is hammered out, the Senate bill, House bill, and then when they get their conference committee version of it, this legislation must be on the Thomas System, it must be on the Internet so that everybody can analyze it before voting. If the pressure can be brought to put that bill — for example, if it’s clearly stated in the bill that 20% of this bill is going to ACORN, people need to be able to see that, people need to be able to see it on the Internet and blow up over it. They are obliged to do this already.
My guess is that because of the urgency and that time is of the essence that they might try to forgo it because they don’t want anybody to know. So this means to be hammered, that this legislation needs to be put up on the Internet on the Thomas System so that everybody can analyze it before voting. All right, to the audio sound bites. Again, let me refresh your memory if you’re just joining us. Let me tell you what happened in the White House meeting to set up these next series of sound bites. Obama was given the floor to speak during White House negotiations for all Democrats. The Democrats deferred to Obama so that he could be the sole speaker for the Democrat Party. This was done by design. They wanted to be able to spin after the meeting that he was just a brilliant negotiator, went in there with a command of the issues, took over the meeting from the president, was acting presidential even though he’s not the president, and put us well on the road to getting a deal, blah, blah. But that’s not what happened. Obama blew it. It blew up in his face.
Obama, on his way over there, apparently — this is from an Obama campaign source. Obama did not know what the House GOP position was on his way to the White House. ‘According to an Obama campaign source, the notes were passed to Obama via senior aides traveling with him, who had been e-mailed the document via a current Goldman Sachs employee and Wall Street fundraiser for the Obama campaign. ‘It was made clear that the memo was from ‘friends’ and was reliable,’ says the campaign source. The memo allowed Obama and his fellow Democrats to box in Republican attendees and essentially took what President Bush had billed as a negotiating meeting off the rails.’ What happened was Obama’s notes contained the details of the House Republican proposal, and that’s what he started with. He criticized it and asked Paulson what he thought of it. Paulson apparently then criticized it, and that’s what John Boehner’s talking about being ganged up on.
Obama went in unprepared. He did not have a prompter. Once he started out that way, the meeting fell apart, yelling and screaming, and it was over, and it was reported that a beleaguered Bush had to struggle to regain control of things and calm everybody down. Now, what’s troubling about this is that Hank Paulson was working in concert with Obama, apparently, according to all of this is, the American Spectator blog — Hank Paulson was working with Obama via — he was removed from it — via his friends at Goldman Sachs, his former firm, and Obama fundraisers. A House Republican leader who was not present at the White House meeting, said, ‘Paulson and his team have not acted in good faith for this President or the administration for which they serve.’ So that’s what happened in the White House meeting. That’s why all the caterwauling today. By the way, Obama admitted all this. If you knew what happened, and you heard his appearances on TV last night, then you would have no doubt what he was talking about. He said, (paraphrasing) ‘Well, you know, I work better on the phone from afar.’ He’s basically saying, ‘I coulda done better if I wasn’t there by talking on the phone, ’cause I need my thinkers to tell me what I’m hearing and what I should respond to.’ He didn’t say that, I’m adding that. In another bite with Brit Hume, he said, ‘Well, this is the problem with inserting presidential politics here.’ So Obama knew they blew it big time, and so the Democrats today, their whole agenda is to dump on McCain for blowing this up, and now we go to the audio sound bites. Here’s Barney Frank this morning on the CBS Early Show, the anchorette said, ‘Wasn’t the idea to get together and reach a compromise, had you in fact reached a compromise that fell apart?’
FRANK: I didn’t know I was going to be the referee of the internal Republican ideological civil war.
REPORTER: Right.
FRANK: To my surprise yesterday the House Republicans came up with their own entirely new plan. And it is a — an ambush plan.
RUSH: There’s nothing new about what the House Republicans believe. Conservatism is conservatism. The House Republicans were never involved in the deal. They announced a deal yesterday that didn’t exist, the Democrats did. They announced a deal that didn’t exist to try to head off McCain’s presence having any impact on this. So now they’re doing a 180 turning this all the way around, the Drive-Bys are not going to tell you this, you’re not going to hear this anywhere else. They’re carrying the water for people like Barney. It was an ambush. They’re trying to portray the White House plan as an ambush ’cause their candidate botched it. Barney Frank again, the anchorette at CBS, ‘Well, do we have a solution by the end of the weekend, yes or no?’
FRANK: It depends on the House Republicans dropping this revolt against the president and cooperating and trying to amend the plan and at this point I can’t give you a yes or no because it’s up to the House Republicans and their war, I think on behalf of Senator McCain, with President Bush.
RUSH: Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is there never, ever, was a deal. The Democrats have the votes to pass everything that they want. We don’t need the Republicans. Ask yourself why. If it’s such a great deal, if this will save America, if this will prevent disaster, if this will prevent a depression, why don’t the Democrats, thinking the country is important first, pass the bill? Why do they want Republican votes on this? If this is so wonderful, if this is the best deal ever, why don’t they just embarrass the Republicans, pass this and leave the Republicans out of it? As I said earlier, they want the Republicans to refute their beliefs. They want the Republicans to repudiate conservatism so that they can go back and make ’em do it over and over again This is pure, 100% politics. It’s not about the deal right now, it’s not about the economy, it’s not saving it. This is about presidential politics, and this is about destroying House conservatives. Last night, Washington, Capitol Hill, after a meeting at the White House, Barney Frank spoke to the press.
FRANK: Senator McCain’s not — did not have anything substantive to say, said the most general things. Based on what’s now going on, I can tell you this. There is no reason in the world why anybody should use this as an excuse to stay away from a debate. There is absolutely no reason at all why Senator McCain should not debate tomorrow except he doesn’t want to.
RUSH: Well, now, Congressman Frank, I have a question. You guys are saying that McCain’s presence blew this up. You’re saying McCain showed up and you were ambushed, and Dingy Harry and Claire McCaskill and Chuck Schumer are all saying, ‘Get McCain outta town. McCain blew this. McCain went into that meeting and it all fell apart.’ Now, I want to know, if McCain didn’t say anything, if McCain didn’t say anything substantive, and if he didn’t say anything ’til the end of the meeting, how could he have blown it up? And Dingy Harry has been saying today that McCain didn’t say much, frankly couldn’t understand what he was saying. Dingy Harry said he spoke at the end of the meeting, ‘I don’t really know what he said.’ Then how could he have blown it up? How could McCain have blown it up? We know that that did not happen. Last night, same press conference, Barney Frank.
FRANK: No. Ms. Pelosi will not bring a partisan bill to the floor. She will not say that you’re going to have a one-sided Democratic bill being attacked by the House Republicans in response to a request by George Bush to do something. And that’s not just internal politics. That’s not good for the country.
RUSH: Once again, the question must be asked, who cares, Bush is a lame duck, if this is so wonderful, if this is so great, if you guys could own Washington for all those future years because you’re the only ones that have the guts to do something right, why not do it? She won’t bring forth a partisan bill to the floor? Meaning, they’re not going to do this without Republican cover, ’cause it must have some problems.
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RUSH: Yeah, it’s fascinating to me to listen to Barney Frank lie and spin. Barney Frank is, I think, more than anybody else responsible for this situation — and he twists it into the fault of the Republican minority in the House! The Republican minority, parliamentarily, cannot stop anything Barney Frank wants to do. Look at that layer of lies that we got. House Republicans coordinating with McCain against Bush, the Republicans have no role in this other than fixing the problem, and they’re only responding ’cause Bush wants something done? This is the guy who said that he didn’t know there was a male prostitution ring going on his own basement? Barney Frank needs to testify under oath for what he has done, and so does Chris Dodd!
So Pelosi will not bring a one-sided bill to the floor, says Barney Frank. So now they’re deferential to the Republicans. The reason she won’t bring this bill to the floor and ram it through is because the bill obviously stinks, and she needs cover. Meanwhile, Obama has not supported the plan. Has anybody noticed this? I have noticed it. Have you heard Obama support the plan? We’ve got a plan, right? We have a plan; everybody had signed on to it, they said yesterday morning. And then we find out there wasn’t a plan, there wasn’t an agreement, and I haven’t heard Obama say he supports it. See, Obama votes ‘present.’ Obama doesn’t make decisions. That’s why he doesn’t want to be there. He wants to be on the phone negotiating and listening.
So seems to me that we could easily say here that Obama and the Democrats don’t agree, that Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank want the conservatives to back a bill that their own party leader has refused to back as of right now. They’re doing everything to cover for the incompetence of this little man, Barack Obama. I realize you, some of you just joining me, may think that I have to prove it when I say that Barack Obama admitted he blew up the White House meeting. I’m going to give you two sound bites. First he had a press conference at the Mayflower Hotel. Not long, some hours after the White House meeting blew up, enough time for his thinkers to come up with an explanation. You now know what happened in there.
When Bush went to the Democrats and asked them to start speaking in negotiation, they all deferred to Obama. He didn’t know what to say. He had been given notes by friends of Henry Paulson in an e-mail on the way to the meeting. The first thing on the notes was: criticize the Republican proposal. John Boehner was sitting there. He asked Paulson about it. This caused a brouhaha. The meeting fell apart. Obama walked out of there and the Democrats, Harry Reid and Pelosi… I guarantee you they walked out of there knowing full well what had happened, that their guy and his competence had been on full display, that that meeting broke down because of him and his inability to run it and lead it, as they tried to engineer. So they had to start damage control, and the first thing out of the box was this.
OBAMA: I think that the way that I’ve been working over the last week constantly in contact with the secretary and the congressional leaders, um, er, you know, may end up creating an environment in which you can actually get something done.
RUSH: So now that you know what happened in the meeting, now you can interpret this. ‘I work better when I’m not there. I work better on the phone, you know, when I’m in constant contact on the phone, and that way people with me can tell me what I’m hearing and tell me what my response ought to be, because I need my thinkers with me. But if I’m in the room and I can’t consult my thinkers ’cause everybody can see me consulting the thinkers, then they know I’m a fraud. If I don’t get my Cliff Notes from somebody, I’m in big trouble.’
Then, after this, Obama started making the rounds of the cable networks, asking for time. He asked for time on Fox News Channel’s Special Report with Brit Hume. And a stunned Brit Hume said, ‘Obama has contacted us and wants to go on the air.’ So he gets him, and Hume said, ‘Look, if tomorrow midday we’re where we are,’ meaning today, ‘and if we still got an outstanding problem with a package that isn’t agreeable so that you can get majorities of both parties, both houses, would it make sense for you to go down to Mississippi or would it be better to stay here and try to do what you could?’
OBAMA: Well, here — here — here’s my, uh, my observation, ‘Brett,’ and I think it — it may have been confirmed in the meeting today. Uh, when you inject presidential politics into delicate negotiations, uh, s-sometimes it’s not helpful. For us, precisely at this difficult time, to be able to say to the American people for 90 minutes — and it’s possible to fly down to Mississippi and back fairly quickly — ‘that this is where we want to take the country and this is what this potentially means for you,’ I continue to think that’s the most important thing we can do.
RUSH: Okay, so the first thing out of his mouth, ‘You know what, when you inject… it confirmed what happened in the meeting today. You put presidential politics in there, it’s just not helpful.’ They walked out of there last night. I guarantee you, the Democrats walked out of there scared to death that the truth would get out that Obama was set up for a huge success and blew it, so they started the CYA last night, and that’s why these Democrats today are carrying the water: ‘Get McCain out of town; McCain blew it up,’ and so forth and so on. Just wanted you to know the truth. But the bottom line is: old Barry hasn’t supported the plan, either.
Obama has not said when he thinks about this plan — that there was, by the way, the Democrats said agreement in principle to yesterday. So Dingy Harry: ‘We want to know where McCain stands on this; McCain’s gotta get the House Republicans.’ Barney Frank: ‘I think we were set up. We gotta get McCain to get the House Republicans in there. We’re only doing this because the president asked us to.’ So now they want to help Bush? Ha! The Democrats want to help Bush get what he wants? (laughing) Right. So now, ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama once again is given the opportunity to vote ‘present,’ not take a stand, not take a position. The more the politics of this unfolds, the more it is becoming crystal clear to me that there’s a lot of stuff in this bailout bill that stinks to high heaven.
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RUSH: Let me ask you a question, my fellow citizens out there. If you are on the line for $700 billion, and that’s just for starters, do you want 20% of it going to a corrupt, fraudulent voter registration group called ACORN which has been accused of voter fraud throughout the country, is a Democrat grassroots organization, is responsible for a big part of this problem and was one of the mentor community organizations Obama worked with when he was a street agitator back in Chicago? We’re being told that we have a crisis. It could be a depression. It could be bad. We gotta do it now, and yet, 20% of the $700 billion is supposed to go to a Democrat voter registration group? You want to pay for that? And, is there any single reporter, one single reporter, out there capable of asking this question of Barney Frank or any other mindless liberal spewing their talking points? Is there one reporter, one journalist, who will ask the ACORN question in relationship to a future possible crisis, recession, depression?