RUSH: Joe Lieberman ends up keeping his committee chairmanship on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Let me tell you the truth about this. Dingy Harry wanted Lieberman out of there. Dingy Harry wanted to punish Lieberman. He wanted to take away his committee chairmanship. He wanted to put him, if anything, on some meaningless subcommittee. He wanted to punish him for running around campaigning for McCain and being against Obama.
Apparently what happened… Now, this is the story. I don’t know what to believe anymore when I see it in the Drive-By Media so I offer that caveat. But the story is Obama leaned on Dingy Harry and said, ‘Look, you leave Lieberman there. If I can handle him being there and he was campaigning against me, you can handle him being there, but I need as many Democrat votes as I can get in the Senate. Plus, I want to show the spirit of bipartisan and working together.’ So Dingy Harry came out and had a little press conference today, and he had to say it. ‘Nobody was more angry than I. I defy anybody to find anybody that was angrier than I was. But we have decided to put all this behind us and move forward.’ So Lieberman keeps the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chairmanship.
So at the end of the day, what do we have here? (chuckling) For all of you moderate Republicans, for all of you people on our side who think that the new way is to reach out to people like this, we just had perhaps the model of moderation and open-mindedness and independent spiritedness in the Senate, Joe Lieberman. And throughout the past year, Senator Lieberman has been out extolling the virtues of the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. For all of the period of time that he’s been campaigning for McCain, there have been occasions where he has been highly critical of Obama while prefacing the criticism with, ‘What a bright young man he is, but he’s not ready.’
We got perhaps some of the most passionate reasons to support Senator McCain we heard in this campaign from Senator Lieberman. At the end of it all, where is Senator Lieberman? He’s back in the Senate. He’s back in the Democrat caucus. He’s caucusing with the Democrats. He’s gonna vote with the Democrats. He now owes Obama everything, and he is going to be groveling to the Democrats for as long as it takes to get back in their good graces. (interruption) Well, I know. The groveling started. He had own little speech in there after Dingy Harry went out, and so a man — and everybody says they personally like Lieberman, and I’ve met him a couple times and I like him personally.
But a guy who represented the target — the kind of voter, the kind of person, the kind of issues and so forth that the Republicans need to go out to find and grow — after a year of saying John McCain was the most qualified person to be president of the United States, where is Senator Lieberman today? Is he Republican? Is he switching sides in caucus with Republicans? Did he stay an independent? He probably will have to stay an independent for political reasons ’til he can run again, but he’ll go back to being a Democrat. Did he come to the Republican Party with McCain and stay? No, he did not. Is McCain staying at the Republican Party is the question, ladies and gentlemen? Is Senator McCain? Will he caucus with Republicans? He’s going to stay a Republican, but is he going to caucus with the Republicans or caucus with the Obamaites? You brilliant, brilliant, brilliant wizards of smart on our side. I hope you see what has happened here. Does this not make a year of what Lieberman did sort of meaningless and irrelevant?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mike, grab audio sound bites 24, 25. We’ve got some sound bites here, Dingy Harry and Joe Lieberman. I’m convinced that one of the things that Lieberman had to do in order to remain in good graces with Dingy Harry, keep his Senate chairmanship, was to promise to never tell the truth about the Democrats again when it comes to foreign policy or anything else on which they are on the wrong side of history. Here it is this morning on Capitol Hill at a press briefing, after the party caucus vote — By the way, the vote was 42 to 13 to keep Senator Lieberman as chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He was stripped, however, of his subcommittee seat on the Environment and Public Works Committee. He will stay on the Committee on Armed Services. So a minor, minor little wrist slap there. Here is Dingy Harry.
REID: We could not have had a Democratic majority for the last two years but for Joe Lieberman. We could not have passed the historic budgets that were led by Chairman Conrad but for Senator Lieberman. So we feel that what happened today has put this behind us.
RUSH: Don’t buy this. Harry Reid wanted him out of there so bad. This was Obama that moved in there, and this is instructive, too, because I’ve seen so many wizards of smart, even on our side, say, ‘You know, this young little man-child, Obama, he’s going to go in there and he’s going to get rolled by these political pros, Pelosi and Reid.’ (laughing) It’s going to be the other way around. Reid and Pelosi just don’t know it yet. Reid might have found out about it this week, but it is going to be the other way around. They’re the ones that are going to get rolled. They’re the ones that are going to get told what is, what is not, and how it’s going to be. Here’s what Lieberman had to say.
LIEBERMAN: My colleagues voted to support a resolution which I believe was fair and forward leaning.
RUSH: Speed it up here.
LIEBERMAN: It’s a resolution that not only resolves the current dilemma —
RUSH: What dilemma?
LIEBERMAN: — but it’s a resolution of reconciliation and not retribution.
RUSH: Right, right.
LIEBERMAN: And I appreciate it.
RUSH: Right.
LIEBERMAN: I particularly —
RUSH: Right, right.
LIEBERMAN: — look forward to continuing my work as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee —
RUSH: All right, that’s enough. You don’t need to hear any more of this. It’s pretty much obvious. Senator Lieberman there is happy to be back, and he sounded a lot like Jesse Jackson, the conciliation, no retribution, everything is fine now. I guarantee you he had to make some promises, and one of those promises is he will not criticize the Democrats ever again. If he does, then he’s going to be in big trouble. He owes everything now to Obama. Obama is a smart cookie when it comes to this political maneuvering stuff.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Kevin in St. Louis, we start with you on the phones today. Kevin, nice to have you here.
CALLER: How you doing today, Rush?
RUSH: Excellent to outstanding, sir.
CALLER: Good. I find it interesting that the senators were allowed to vote in secret ballot on Lieberman. However, they are in favor of card check.
RUSH: Yeah, you know, this is a bunch of people have been mentioning this to me, and I have sort of a lackadaisical mood or attitude about this because clearly what you say is correct, and it’s a very hard-hitting point. Let me ask you a serious question.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: We’re all devising ways here to be effective in criticizing Democrats and Obama so that their advance toward collectivism can be somewhat stalled, right? I’m not being critical, don’t misunderstand the tone, I’m just asking you a question, who cares out there in voter land, whether there was a secret ballot in the Senate but there will not be secret ballots allowed in small business?
CALLER: Well, I just think it speaks to the hypocrisy.
RUSH: There’s no question, but liberalism is hypocrisy and much worse, and we’ve got 50 years of liberal hypocrisy and liberal failure, and they still won the election. Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not dispirited and I’m not down in the dumps here. But the idea that Congress would set up different rules for itself while requiring all kinds of different sets of rules for us happens all the time. It happens all the time, and even with the worst approval ratings in history, they get reelected.
CALLER: Absolutely correct, Rush. Rush, can I ask you one more question?
RUSH: But, of course, sir. Fire away. I didn’t mean to steal your thunder here. Senators can do a secret ballot vote so nobody knows how they voted on Lieberman but the same senators are likely to pass a bill saying if you run a small business, your workers are not allowed to debate or vote in private over whether to unionize.
CALLER: Correct. My next question, I know these are tough economic times for you, and I access your website through another website. And do you have to pay a per-click fee if I access your website through another website?
RUSH: Do I have to pay a per-click fee if you access my website through another website?
CALLER: That is correct.
RUSH: I have no idea.
CALLER: I was just trying to save you some money if you do.
RUSH: You’re trying to save me some money?
CALLER: Well, I know it’s tough economic times for everybody, Rush.
RUSH: Well — (laughing) — yes, they are tough economic times for everybody out there, but I don’t think we manage it that precisely.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: We take the hits.
CALLER: All right.
RUSH: We monetize the website in a totally different way. We’re not dependent on hits for our advertising revenue. Our business model is years ahead of anybody else on the Internet out there. That kind of minutia is time wasting. We have more efficient methods here of monetizing the website. I’m glad you called out there, Kevin.
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RUSH: David in Long Beach, California. Glad you called, sir, nice to have you here.
CALLER: Yeah, hey, it’s a pleasure to be speaking to the leader of the Republican Party.
RUSH: No, no, the leader of the conservative movement.
CALLER: That’s right.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: That’s right. That’s what they’re calling you nowadays. The point I wanted to make was that I’m very eager to support Joe Lieberman because he was eager to support somebody that he knew was not going to help him politically. It was only a danger to him to support John McCain, and we need guys with backbone like that in the office, and we just don’t have any, especially the Democrats.
RUSH: I’m not sure exactly what you’re saying. Here’s my confusion. Are you reacting to what I said about Lieberman earlier, or are you making your own point?
CALLER: Well, yeah, you were saying earlier that it was kind of pointless that Lieberman had stuck his neck out like that, that he rendered himself impotent in all ways politically.
RUSH: No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. That’s what I was hoping you were saying. Let me be more accurate in what I was saying. One of my bones of contention is not Lieberman. Lieberman is who he is. All Democrat liberals are who they are. And yet we’ve got idiots and wizards of smart on our side who think that our future as Republicans depends on converting people like Joe Lieberman, and we’re not going to convert ’em and Lieberman is just proving it. That was the point I was trying to make.
CALLER: Good point. I agree with you. All I was saying is that I was proud of him for doing something that could only damage him but he knew was the right thing to do for his good friend John McCain, that’s all.
RUSH: Well, was he doing the right thing for McCain or the right thing for the country?
CALLER: Well, I think, you know, he —
RUSH: Let me ask you a question. If he really thought that Obama was not qualified, too little experience, if he really thought McCain was far more qualified to be president and I guess you’re going to assign to Lieberman the fact he was being honest, you trust that he meant all that when he was in the campaign, right?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Okay. So now that’s all out the window now. I mean McCain lost —
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: — and of course it’s time to mend fences and go back with the winner and so forth. This is just a problem I have with politicians. We’re always eager to credit these people that cross the aisle and, I’m sorry, the times are too tough and they’re too challenging and I’m not interested in praising people that cross the aisle and then go back. Okay, if you want to cross the aisle, stay with us, stay with us. If you’re going to cross the aisle for whatever reason and then go back, stay there in the first place and don’t come. And the same thing on our side, okay, are you going to cross the aisle? Stay there. Folks, this is what I meant a moment ago in what I think was a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly presented example of how we need to go after Obama. You look for the positives, you look for the upsides, we’ve got a golden opportunity now to contrast capitalism with collectivism. We have a golden opportunity.
For example, every time that we have had a story about health care from Great Britain — lines, no more surgeries, if you have certain kind of cancers, sorry, we’re overbooked, we’re overloaded. Canada, same thing, and we tell those stories we report that news and we say to people, ‘If you want your health care like that, vote Democrat.’ Frankly, nobody believes that health care in this country is going to turn into something as bad as it is in Great Britain, or any of the European socialist countries or even in Canada, because they live in the United States of America. Even though they may be dissatisfied with certain things, at the end of the day they still love their country and they think America is the best place on earth and the rotten things that happen around the world are not going to happen here. That’s why people get so upset over the price of gas going up so high, get upset over recessions. These kinds of ups and downs are not supposed to happen in America. But, we now have Obamaism. We have a collectivist who’s going to be inaugurated, and we are going to be able to see a collectivist run his party and try to run this country on the basis of his collectivist beliefs. We’re going to call it Obamaism, and we’ve got a ready-made contrast with it for our side, the conservatives, and people will have a chance to see. So it’s an opportunity.