RUSH: I want to start with this, Rasmussen Reports: ”Republicans See Their Party as Leaderless’ — Who is in charge here? Sixty-eight percent of Republican voters say that their party has no clear leader according to Rasmussen, another 17% are undecided, just 5% view either McCain or Michael Steele as the party’s leader.’ I have already dealt with this. The Republican Party does not have a leader, and it will not have a leader until the next presidential nominee of the Republican Party is decided upon, and in that period of time, that will be four years, or three, and in that period of time the party’s going to have a major shakeout debate.
Who knows what’s going to end up happening to this party. There’s no clear indication, nobody knows what’s going to happen. The party has got all kinds of different factions now, people that used to be conservative who have forgotten what it means, it runs the gamut. But the real question to me is not who is the Republican Party leader. The real question to me is who is the leader of the Democrats? With all this talk about who the leader of the Republicans is, the reality is that Republicans are out of power, the Republicans are not that important. What is important is who is the leader of the Democrats. Now, some of you might instinctively say that it is Obama. Well, hold on. Not so fast.
If Obama is truly the leader, why does he never speak without reading off a teleprompter? Who writes the words that Obama emits and vocalizes? Who approves the words that Obama uses when it comes to his signature issue, the Porkulus bill. He didn’t write it. He didn’t even read it. It was written in the office of Nancy Pelosi. Very few people to this moment have read that bill, the stimulus bill. Does that make Nancy Pelosi the leader of the Democrat Party? Well, you could make a case for that. When Obama and Hillary were neck and neck in the primaries, Pelosi did wave her mallet, she signaled the superdelegates to vote for Obama. It was clear that Pelosi wanted no part of Hillary in Washington in any kind of executive or legislative branch role. Secretary of state is okay, she’s out of the country making gaffes, that’s just fine with Nancy Pelosi. But I don’t think it’s that easy.
Who is the leader of the Democrats? It’s not MoveOn.org. It’s not this bunch running never ending ads featuring me. I think I know who it is after reading the New York Times recently: David Axelrod with a little Rahm Emanuel thrown in. Karl Rove was nothing compared to Axelrod, ’cause this guy, Axelrod, really is Obama’s brain, looming in the background, which is the best place to look in this administration, is the background to find out what the hell’s going on. The real leader of the Democrat Party could well be George Soros, but the guy that is putting the words in Obama’s mouth, Obama doesn’t speak without a prompter anymore, is David Axelrod, and there’s a story in the New York Times this morning: ‘President’s Political Protector Is Ever Close at Hand.’ David Axelrod is identified as the political protector. Few words come across Obama’s lips that Axelrod doesn’t bless, is a quote from this story.
‘Axelrod has a strong belief in polling and focus groups.’ It goes on to give many details, such as: ‘There are few words that come across the president’s lips that have not been blessed by Mr. Axelrod. He reviews every speech, studies every major policy position and works with Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, to prepare responses to the crisis of the day.’ There are other examples, and then there’s this little reference in the story: ‘He also helps decide which fights to pick and which ones to avoid, making him a leading voice in setting the political tone in Washington. The recent back-and-forth with Rush Limbaugh, for example, was explicitly authorized by Mr. Axelrod, who told aides that it was not a moment to sit quietly after Mr. Limbaugh said he hoped that Mr. Obama would ‘fail.” Well, now, the New York Times and the people at Politico got a little battle here, because the people at Politico said that it was Rahm Emanuel working with Carville and Begala and Stephanopoulos that hatched this plan last fall. Now the New York Times gives the credit to Axelrod.
So while everybody’s running around trying to figure out who it is that is the leader of the Republican Party, the real interesting question is, who’s running the Democrat show, because you can’t remove Obama from the equation, obviously. I know I raised it during the primary, who’s putting words in this guy’s mouth? We learned it was Axelrod writing all the speeches, but we have this story that the reason the Brits got dissed is ’cause Obama was just tired. Did you hear about that? He was just overworked. He was swamped. He couldn’t believe the workload, just couldn’t handle it. So he sent somebody to Blockbuster to pick out 25 DVDs, I hope they were region 2, for a prime minister who’s blind in one eye and is going blind in the second eye and we just learned this over the weekend and he’s very nervous about losing his sight. You would be, too.