RUSH: Now, Mr. Snerdley mentioned to me at the top of the break, he said, ‘I don’t understand, Rush. You wouldn’t believe the phone calls.’
They’re people who don’t want to go on the air, Democrat, liberal voters are calling and gloating, and they’re saying, ‘Boy, Rush, we love listening to you now. We just love it ’cause we know our guy’s got it in the bag. It’s over with, and I don’t care what Rush says. It doesn’t bother me. I’m at peace. I’m in a state of calm.’ You had a couple calls like that, right? And of course they think this because they were watching television, and it’s in the bag. We’ve got a Pew poll out today has it 53-38 Obama. We have a Rasmussen poll out, three points. We got a Gallup poll, two points. We have the IDB/TIPP poll at 2.8 or some such thing. Zogby, their numbers today, are a little under five. They’re call it ‘static’; the race is static. AP most recent AP poll is two points. But you still have ABC/Washington Post up there at 15 and the Newsweek poll they’re still pretty large. They’re all over the place.
Snerdley says, ‘Look, I know how to watch TV. You have taught me well, and I’m convinced, Rush. It’s over. It’s over. I mean, I look at their electoral maps, and I look at the whole thing and every state’s blue! I don’t see McCain winning but two or three electoral votes, two or three states. That’s what they’re showing me on TV.’ (sigh) You know, folks, people ask me all the time. ‘What do you think is going to happen?’ and I don’t know. And this is the first time in a lot of elections that my gut’s not telling me anything, either. Now, normally I get instincts. Normally my gut says, ‘Go against the conventional wisdom.’ That’s pretty normal for me. Normally my gut says, I think I know what’s going to happen. When I have that gut instinct, then I pass it on.
I’m confused. My gut does not tell me anything here. The most honest thing you can tell you is, ‘I have no idea what’s going to happen,’ but at the same time my gut does not say big-time Obama landslide. My gut also doesn’t say a McCain surprise win. I just have no feeling for this, because it is way too far off the board. And there are other factors, too. We’ve been through them. I think the reason my gut is not giving me any guidance, as it were, is that I do believe this election is a referendum on Obama, up or down, and I don’t know how that’s going to play out. You know, I don’t know how many people are actually going to vote for McCain because they’re voting for McCain or voting for Palin, as to how many are voting against Obama. That’s why I think my gut here is silent on this.
But I will tell you, I do have some gut human reactions. And I do have a traditional, highly respected view of the people of this country. Despite the devolution of pop culture and despite the rise of a lack of thinking and applied thought in our culture, having given way to a swarm of people who simply feel — and I don’t know how large either group is. I don’t know which one’s the majority, thinkers or feelers. I just don’t know. But my traditional belief of the country tells me that average, ordinary Americans watch what’s happening with the media in the coverage of this campaign and resent the hell out of it. The American people love fair, right? You can say what you want about the media, bias and all that. This is not even fair, and they expect fairness from the media.
Objectivity and all that, yeah, but they expect fairness. If you’re going to go after people, go after everybody. I mean you’ve got two people here asking for the most power we ever give people, and they’re only going after one. They’re not investigating the other guy. I think most Americans think ‘fairness,’ which to me is an elusive concept anyway, but still most Americans have it, and this is not fair. I think most people know it. I think most people also are offended by anybody who gloats and is arrogant and is acting as though they’ve won, whatever it is, before it’s over. I can’t tell you the number of times I have watched a baseball or football game with people and one team’s got a player or two that go up a touchdown with three minutes left to go, after coming back from being down two or three touchdowns.
The guy that scored the touchdown starts gloating and starts taunting other people, and the people watch that and say, ‘I hope that team loses.’ They don’t like that kind of behavior being rewarded. They love people getting comeuppances. They love people who think they have it in the bag, finding out they didn’t even have the bag, much less were they in it. Obama with his speeches in Berlin and running around the media and everybody acting like this is all over, and this 30-minute inaugural address tonight? I don’t think it has anything to do with delaying the World Series. I just think, ‘Okay, Obama. We see. It’s a little overkill here,’ a little backlash to the media, a little backlash to Obama, the arrogance and smugness of Obama.
Now, I still think that there are enough Americans that are repulsed by this that it can affect the way they vote. But other than that — and I also really do not believe, and this is where I could be dead wrong; we’re going to find out next Tuesday. I do not believe that a majority of voters — not a majority of people in the country, that’s a different equation. But I don’t believe yet that a majority of voters are ready to give away their freedom. I don’t believe that a majority of voters are ready to turn over the keys of this country to somebody about whom they don’t know anything, about somebody who will not tell them anything about himself. I just don’t believe there are people in this country — a majority of voters in this country — who are going to sign up for making The Government the most important aspect of their lives. We’ll find out Tuesday.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Pam in Auberry, California. It’s great to have you on the EIB. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for having me. Dittos from a first-time caller, longtime listener.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: And I have a question for the professor.
RUSH: Yezz.
CALLER: Tonight when we watch Obama on TV, in the past you’ve suggested words or phrases to put along the bottom of our set. Do you have anything for tonight’s viewing?
RUSH: Yes. My suggestion to you is don’t watch it.
CALLER: (laughing) I was kind of thinking that I wasn’t going to watch it because I’m afraid I would get so angry, I would throw my dog toys at the TV.
RUSH: I’m actually conflicted by this because there’s a part of me that says this is overdone. There’s too much Obama too much of the time, too much fawning, too much this. I was talking about my instincts in the previous half hour of the program where I said something about this. The American people, this is not the kind of personality, the kind of unfairness, the kind of onslaught that the American people reward. So there could be a lot of backlash to this, too much Obama. On the other hand, you could end up being hypnotized. A bunch of surgeons and doctors in Tucson of a professional organization says Obama’s appeal is he has hypnotic effect on people, and they’ve even… I guess I should spend some time on this. They actually have dissected his words, his phrases, and how they are hypnotic. So I was going to say, basically young people and the very intelligent are the most susceptible to this hypnosis, which would put me in the at-risk group, but I of course have not been hypnotized by Obama. What I was going to say is, I’ll watch it for you —
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: — and tell you what happens. You don’t want to watch. You’re going to get mad, especially if you watch it and watch the commentary after it. Even though it’s an ad, it’s a paid stump speech, you’ll turn on cable networks, ‘Oh, this was so wonderful! Oh, this…’ and Bill Clinton may be in the last part of it live on stage with Obama. Most of it’s on tape.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: But Clinton may be with him. If you do watch it, here’s the sign I want you to make. It’s two lines: ‘Do not be hypnotized. You are listening to a socialist,’ or ‘You are watching a socialist.’ Whatever. ‘Do not be hypnotized. Do not be fooled. You are watching a socialist.’ We’ll be back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to the phones we go to San Antonio. This is Kyle. Welcome, Kyle, to the Rush Limbaugh program. It’s nice to have you here.
CALLER: Hi, Kyle. I mean, hi, Rush. Sorry. Dittos from the most vilified minority in America. The question I have real quick is the last few years I’ve heard you talking about how we’ve had liberals on the ropes and how we’ve, you know, been pushing ’em back. Now all of a sudden we’re sitting here on the threshold of seeing all branches of government being taken over by not just liberals but radical liberals. Is that something that we missed, or what’s…? I guess I’d like to hear your analysis on that.
RUSH: Really? I’ll be happy to give you my analysis of this. Everything I told you was true. We have pushed ’em back. Look, my context on this goes back to 1988 when this program started. In 1988, we had liberals running the show and everything. Bush 41 was elected. He got thrown out in 1992. We fought ’em back, and got the Republicans to win the House in 1994. We had a number of years of Clinton, but the Republicans were able to balance the budget, enforce welfare reform. We had this vast New Media that has the mainstream media discombobulated, acting in the most unprofessional and un-objective manner in which I have ever seen them operate. That’s because they’re panicked. President Bush won two elections. What’s happened is that, as I have told you: Any organization, any group of people — political party, classroom, whatever — that is not conservative will by definition become liberal.
Our problem has been that we have not had elected conservative leadership. We have had Republicans, but we have not had elected conservative leadership. We can have all the media we want. If the Drive-By Media did not have Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy, if they didn’t have those people — consistently liberal fighting to lead this country where they want to take it — they wouldn’t be able to influence the American people, either, because power emanates from those who are elected. Our side, for some reason, got scared off of conservatism after having seen the recipe for two landslide elections. So any organization that isn’t conservative — ’cause that’s an intellectual pursuit, you have to constantly stay on people about that until you get ’em.
Once a conservative’s a conservative, you’ve got ’em. But if you let go of them before they fully understand it, bammo! Because liberalism is gutless. It’s so easy. It’s the most gutless choice you can make. So that’s why I say, ‘Regardless the outcome of this election, Kyle, old buddy, old pal, it’s time to rebuild first the conservative movement and then a political apparatus for it.’ That is going to be necessary to beat back Obama if he wins and beat back the Democrats, or at least fight them. It is going to be fundamental. It’s not hard to explain what happened. It is more puzzling to explain why it happened, but even I think I have some answers. I’m not fully finished formulating these answers, but a large part of it is the very culture of Washington, DC, itself. Once you go there — a place so dominated politically, socially, culturally, by the enemy, the political enemy — it’s tough to hang on there. It really is.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Dimitry in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, you’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. My name is Dimitry from Long Meadow, Massachusetts, and mega dittos. I’ve been a longtime listener since 1984. I have a mom in West Palm Beach, Florida, who’s a Democrat. She says privately to me, quietly (whispering), ‘I’m going to vote for McCain,’ but publicly she says she’s going to vote for Obama.
RUSH: Who does she say that to publicly, just her friends?
CALLER: Her friends, yes. Her friends. She plays the piano for the synagogue over there and she has to keep a certain image over there. That’s how she does things, but with me she tells me that she’s going to vote for McCain, and I think there’s a lot more people like that.
RUSH: Well, we don’t know. See, this is what we don’t know. When we get these anecdotal stories, but we really, really don’t know. But we’ll find out on Tuesday. That’s why you gotta stay engaged.