RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, it is worse than I thought. It is worse than I thought inside the Republican Party. What the Republican Party, led by disgruntled and failed McCain staffers are trying to do to Sarah Palin, is unconscionable and is unacceptable. Greetings, my friends, it’s Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB Microphone. Once again, coming to you live and direct from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Great to have you here. 800-282-2882, the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
You remember during the campaign, Bill Cunningham in Cincinnati went out at a rally for McCain, introduced McCain, well, he didn’t introduce him but he got the crowd riled up, he did a warmup for the later appearance by McCain and referred to Obama with his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. McCain went into a tizzy and denounced Cunningham and he denounced all kinds of other people who were supporting McCain and trying to rally supporters for McCain. Any time they said anything about Obama that McCain didn’t like, something as innocuous as mentioning his middle name, McCain denounced them, distanced himself. You wonder why the Republican Party lost in North Carolina. Remember the great ads the North Carolina Republican Party ran and McCain denounced them, demanded they pull the ads down?
Now, where is Senator McCain today when members of his own staff are trying to destroy Sarah Palin? I haven’t heard a word. In fact, all I’ve heard about Senator McCain is this from the Associated Press-Obama: ‘During the campaign, McCain staunchly opposed setting a deadline even as the Iraqi government began working with the Bush administration to do so. But in conceding the presidency to Obama, McCain pledged ‘to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.’ Aides said they believed McCain would work well with Obama as president because much of his best work in the Senate had been done with Democrats, including a landmark campaign finance law he crafted with Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold,’ and the unsuccessful effort with Ted Kennedy to pass comprehensive immigration reform. ‘Democrats, who padded their majorities in the House and Senate, have a suggestion: McCain can mediate solutions to partisan standoffs on key legislation.’ Chuck-U Schumer, New York Democrat: ‘There’s a need for the old John McCain, a leader who worked in a bipartisan way.’
So the Democrats, they’re out there, they want McCain to come back and be some kind of a liaison from the Obama White House to the Senate. The old John McCain’s back, the guy who worked with the Democrats. Where is he denouncing his own staff dumping all over Sarah Palin? Let me tell you why they’re dumping all over Sarah Palin. They are dumping all over Sarah Palin because she is conservative. This is why I say it is worse than I thought. I knew during the campaign, I knew during the primaries that we had a bunch of different coalitions now making up the Republican Party and that all those other coalitions were doing everything they could to dismantle and dismember conservatism and to render it inoperative in the Republican Party. We all knew this. One of the purposes of the country club blue-blood Republicans was to find a candidate, go out and reach to the other side, bring in Democrats, bring in independents and so forth, and that would be the magic formula to go out and win. And then support comprehensive immigration reform, because big business wants it for cheap labor and that’s going to get the Hispanic vote. We see the results. They were all wrong, the strategies were all wrong, they were a dismal failure.
So now Sarah Palin, who was the one person in this campaign that brought the Republican base back into the fold, that fired them up, that inspired them, that excited them, we all saw the turnout where she went, we all saw her speeches. Their focusing here on one Katie Couric interview, but some of the things that they are saying about her are just unconscionable and unacceptable, and they have been leaking this stuff from inside the McCain campaign. We need to know who these people are for future reference down the line. Now, Carl Cameron did a report on Fox last night, he was on the O’Reilly factor and he’s now been everywhere on Fox because people have been leaking to him, but it’s not just Fox and Carl Cameron. Newsweek has a Special Project, they call it, on Sarah Palin, the purpose of which is to destroy Sarah Palin and, of course, establish The Anointed One.
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RUSH: It’s worse than I thought. There are country club blue-blood moderate Republicans who want nothing to do with a firebrand conservative in the Republican Party who can fire up people, who can inspire people, who can motivate them.
This Newsweek Special Project is amazing. ‘Newsweek has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported.’ Now, why? Why do this? Who benefits from this? Who gains from this kind of story running right now? She’s back in Alaska. The campaign’s over. The election’s over and we got more stories on her wardrobe and how she’s a diva? Who in the world makes out okay if this happens? And, see, when you ask the question of who benefits, it’s amazing how the seas do part and enlightenment shoves your way and you can see exactly what’s going on. Listen to this. ‘While publicly supporting Palin –‘ right. Publicly supporting her? We had leaks trying to cream her during the campaign. ‘– McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family — clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards.
‘The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent ‘tens of thousands’ more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as ‘Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,’ and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books. A Palin aide said: ‘Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin.”
So what’s going on here is two things: an effort to blame her for the loss, all this talk about she dragged the ticket down, which is an absolute laugher, it is an absolute joke and an effort to damage her for the future. It’s unconscionable what is happening and what they’re doing to Sarah Palin in our own party. Let me ask you this, folks. Will smearing a classy and upbeat conservative star make her more or less popular with the Republican base? If she decides to remain a public figure, she will be a very popular national figure, and I don’t think she’s gonna be intimidated by anybody regarding her decision whatever she wants to do, but that is the precise reason that they’re going after her on our side. McCain moderates don’t care for conservatives. We know this. McCain moderates are not welcome going forward in our party, as far as I’m concerned, especially now that Obama wants McCain to be a liaison between his administration and the Senate, because the good McCain’s back, the old good John McCain, the guy that votes with Democrats, and Chuck-U Schumer, I mean that’s the kind of resume we want, right? We want a resume, we want a guy who claims that the real McCain, Chuck Schumer defining for us who the real McCain is, that’s the guy we want back, right?
It just makes me mad, folks, put plain and simple, it infuriates me. It’s beyond low. Look at what she did. She’s minding her own business up there in Alaska; she didn’t campaign for the veep job. So they call her up, ’cause they need a Hail Mary, they’re admitting when they say they needed a Hail Mary that their own candidate was going nowhere. They need a Hail Mary, so what did she do? She dragged herself and her entire family all over the fruited plain without missing a beat. She was unfailingly cheerful. She was a spot of sunshine in an abysmal election year. And now they’re upset at her because of all the rumors about going rogue and so forth. Wait ’til you hear, if you haven’t heard this yet we’re going to play after the break what Carl Cameron reported he was told on O’Reilly’s Fox show last night by McCain staffers.
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RUSH: Here’s the first of a couple sound bites with Carl Cameron. This is last night on the O’Reilly Factor.
CAMERON: Early on, they began to discover that there were these gaps in her knowledge. I just want to rattle off a couple of the things that insiders say she just simply didn’t know. There were real problems with basic civics, government structures; municipal state and federal government responsibilities. She didn’t know the nations involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement, we’re told. She didn’t understand, McCain aides told me today, that Africa was a continent and not a country, and actually asked them — they argue, they say — if South Africa wasn’t just part of the country as opposed to a country in the continent. They go on to say that she didn’t understand the idea of American exceptionalism, a classic principle of Wilsonian doctrine that says that the United States is exceptional in the world and has therefore a very special role in leading the globe.
RUSH: I don’t believe any of this, and what kills it for me is that she ‘didn’t understand…American exceptionalism.’ She’s the only one in the McCain campaign who did understand American exceptionalism, and had to drag the rest of the campaign kicking and screaming into the concept. We never heard about American exceptionalism from our own party ’til Sarah Palin showed up. This South African… Not knowing the countries in Africa? Not knowing how the federal government works? She’s governor of Alaska, for crying out loud! This is just a smear job. She is being smeared worse than anybody in the McCain campaign went after Obama or any of his questionable allies.
CAMERON: There are stories that say she would look at her press clippings in the morning and throw what has been described to me as ‘tantrums.’ One of the more infamous stories that’s now come out is there was a time when McCain staffers went to collect her at her hotel room and she had just stepped out of the shower and essentially met them wrapped in a bathrobe. They were taken aback by that. They have suggested that she’s a bit of a shopoholic and that on more than one occasion she would go out and buy clothes that to many seemed unnecessary because the campaign had already provided her with a very large wardrobe, uh, a wardrobe that famously rang up a bill of $150,000, mostly because they bought extra sizes to make sure everything fit.
RUSH: (laughing) So this is Carl Cameron last night on Fox detailing what had been told to him. Carl Cameron, by the way, is the voice of the McCain insiders, I should point out. So they’re dumping on Sarah Palin, and you have to ask yourself: ‘Why? Who benefits from this happening to Sarah Palin?’
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RUSH: You might ask, ‘Why is Carl Cameron spewing all this stuff?’ Okay, so somebody inside the McCain campaign reports it to him, but why does he spew all this stuff out there? I guess to have a scoop. I don’t know. But it’s quite telling, it is quite instructive here, ladies and gentlemen, as if we conservatives aren’t angry enough with Obama and McCain, the fact is we’re going to have to defeat ’em both now, all over again. So I’m just going to warn you, there’s going to be a McCain-somebody, comprehensive immigration bill, which will result in the migration of more nonpaying Democrat voters. This I cannot believe and I’m going to deal with this as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears today. The wizards of smart on our side are all out there talking about how Obama’s going to govern from the center. (laughing) They have learned nothing! I don’t even think that this is wishful thinking, or hopefulness.
I think it’s pure ignorance that Obama’s going to govern from the center.
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RUSH: Two more sound bites here on Sarah Palin and we’ll move on. This is from DNCTV this morning, Peter Alexander on Palin’s shopping spree.
ALEXANDER: An angry McCain aide characterized the shopping spree as ‘Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus coast to coast.’ In fact, they may have spent as much as 20 to $40,000 for clothes on Todd, 20 to $35,000 on clothes for the children, as one staffer had joked, there were also some Gucci shoes being worn by those kids.
RUSH: Now, it’s beyond the pale because this is our own party leaking to the Drive-By Media to destroy Sarah Palin. This is a clear indication, my friends, of what is happening. They’re attacking Sarah Palin and they’re the ones that picked her, or McCain did. They’re destroying Sarah Palin, and you have to ask why, what possible benefit is it right now? And the only benefit I can see is to make sure she doesn’t rise again as a force for conservatism in the Republican Party. There’s no other reason to do this. You can chalk it up to, ‘Well, maybe they just personally don’t like her,’ that’s fine and dandy, but this is suicidal. And I’ll tell you something else, the people that are doing this, it must really matter, because they are running a huge risk of never getting hired again. Somebody runs for office, presidential candidate on the Republican side, why would you hire any of these people? A, they’re the architects of a huge defeat, and B, they’re out now trying to destroy their own vice presidential nominee. I have an idea of one of the names but I’m not going to mention because I can’t prove it, so I don’t know. But it’s obviously more than one person and it’s obviously somebody, somebody’s doing this. Whoever it is has just shown stripes. This is mind-boggling. It’s worse than I thought. Here’s Palin last night, herself, after she had landed back in Alaska. An unidentified reporter asked her about all these allegations.
PALIN: That’s kind of a small, evidently bitter type of person who would anonymously charge something foolish like that that I perhaps didn’t know an answer to a question. So until I know who — who is talking about it, I won’t have a comment on false allegations.
RUSH: So, that’s Sarah Palin responding to it trying to take the high road and stay above it. She does raise an interesting point. Why did this person just go out and blab everything to Carl Cameron at Fox? Why not just go on camera with Carl Cameron? Why not just put this out there in your own voice and with your own face on camera? Go ahead and do it on CNN, go do it on ABC. Why do this on Fox? Folks, this is quite telling the way this is all shaking out. These operatives who are leaking, these are the people who work for moderate Republicans. They will work for anyone who will pay them. They are leaking to cover their own butts because they are failures. They are the architects of the failure of this campaign. Now, there’s something that happened. I didn’t talk about it because I was trying to stay upbeat and positive. The last thing I wanted to do was participate here in dispiriting you. But there was a piece at The Politico.com about two weeks before the election and it was telling, especially now looking at it in hindsight. It was amazing. It was a story filled with anonymous leaks, quotes from anonymous people on how horrible the McCain campaign was, how rotten the candidate himself was.
All of these campaign aides were trying to cover their own rear ends. They were going out there and blaming other campaign aides for things that went wrong, the choice of Palin, why McCain looked like Yosemite Sam prancing around when the dynamite failed to go off at half the debates. It was a circular firing squad, and at the time, the way it was interpreted was, okay, the campaign knows they’re going to lose, and these staffers want to work on another campaign, so they’re out there covering their bases, firing anonymous shots at all the other campaign staffers, blaming them and blaming him and blaming her and all that. And The Politico story put out, okay, this is the first sign this thing is over. McCain people know they’re going to lose, so the campaign staff now trying to protect themselves. That’s what this Palin thing is, in part. This Palin thing, these leakers are the kind of people who work for moderate Republicans. They’ll work for anybody who will pay them, and they’re leaking to cover their own butts now because they are failures. That is precisely what is happening here.
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RUSH: By the way, folks, notice one thing here. When these moderate Republicans, when these McCain staffers go after Sarah Palin, they’re not going after her ideas, are they? They’re not trashing her ideas. No, no, no, no, no. They’re not trashing her support for low marginal tax rates, are they? They’re not trashing her ideas on immigration. They’re not trashing her ideas on energy, which are better than McCain’s. They can’t go after her views because going after her views would go after the Republican base, and they still want to pretend that they’re interested in the Republican base. So they’re trashing her personally. They’re trashing her as a person, ’cause that’s all they have left. Not even Bob Shrum was this low! Bob Shrum is a perennial loser on the Democrat side managing Democrat presidential campaigns, and not even he went after the people that worked with him in this way.
Now, you might also say, ‘Hey, if they’d have won, it would have been all different.’ I don’t think so. I do not think so. This is personal. I think if they had won, there would still be an effort against Palin right now to get her off the ticket and get somebody else in there as vice president, if they had won. I’ll tell you something else we need to do. As long as we’re on the subject here, we didn’t even pick our nominee. Can we remember this? We did not pick the nominee. The Democrats and the media picked our nominee. What you people in the McCain campaign and everywhere else need a to start doing in the Republican Party, is close our primaries in states that you have ’em open where Democrats and independents can cross over and select our nominee.
The Democrats hated Operation Chaos. Remember that? They said, ‘This is unconstitutional! Horrible.’ It was nothing! This was one small attempt to duplicate what they’ve been doing for years, selecting our nominee. So I’ll make a deal: Democrats pick the Democrat nominee; Republicans pick the Republican nominee. We don’t need Democrats and the media picking both nominees. And that is what has happened here. Now look. I’ve run out of time here to play these sound bites. That’s what I’m in. There’s a lot to do on this program. It’s unfolding very fast, these sound bites about who is Obama. But these are juicy. We’ll save ’em for the monologue section the top of the next hour. Here’s Bart in Manahawkin, New Jersey. It’s great to have you, sir, on the Rush Limbaugh program.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Yes, sir. Fine.
CALLER: Good, good. I’ve been listening to you since you had Gorbasms and caller abortions, but I loved it. Listen, I wanted to bring up a point. The moderates who are running McCain’s campaign, by saying that Sarah Palin wasn’t a great pick and she has all these problems and so forth, aren’t they basically saying that John McCain made a terrible choice there for vice president; there’s something wrong with his pick?
RUSH: Well, yeah, you could… (laughing) Haven’t we already established the problem there, long before the pick? I don’t want to pile on Senator McCain here. We don’t know that Senator McCain is the one doing the dumping. All we know is he’s not renouncing his own people who are dumping on her. You know, why didn’t whoever did this pick some other network? Why did they dump it on Fox? Why’s Fox allowing itself to be used like this?
CALLER: Oh, sure. Fox is the one. Fox obviously goes to more conservatives and Republicans than they do to on the other side. That’s why they picked him.
RUSH: Look, of course throw in McCain’s judgment on this, but he’s out there. He did defend her. He defended her quite a bit whenever she came under attack during the campaign. He hasn’t spoken up since. All right, look, thanks for the call.