Barney Frank on Bipartisanship

RUSH: You gotta hear this sound bite, number 23, Mike. I just had it delivered. Just now on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell (NBC News, Washington), she has the Banking Queen on, Barney Frank. She says, ‘Mitch McConnell is saying it’s a partisan bill that will cut Medicare by half a trillion dollars. We know there’s no public option per se.’

FRANK: I don’t accept, uhh, Senator McConnell’s characterization. I think what you’re seeing is, uh, buh, you know, the one mistake President Obama made I think was to think that with the extreme conservative takeover of the Republican Party — with the very vehement influence — that he was going to get bipartisanship. Max Baucus tried his hardest it was humanly possible to do to pick up a Republican. I think there are Republicans in the Senate who would like to have been with them but they face such opposition from within their own party that they’re not there.

OBAMA: He’s a jackass.

RUSH: So here we have Barney Frank saying Obama’s big mistake was trying to work with Republicans. (laughs) He hasn’t met with Republicans since April, John Boehner says. Obama’s big mistake has been working with Democrats! Here’s Rick in Malibu. Great to have you on the program, sir. You’re on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hey. Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: Dittos from the far Left Coast.

RUSH: Yes, sir. (chuckles)

CALLER: I was listening to your comments about the limitation of speech that House members can make on the floor of the ‘Kremlin.’ Do those rules apply to the president as well?

RUSH: No. Well, I say that instinctively. I don’t know what the rules of decorum are for what the president can and can’t say. But this is the point. With Obama, even if there were rules there wouldn’t be any rules. He’s not going to be held to account for anything, so we can come up there… Look, he repeatedly lied. He demeaned that chamber. He insulted the integrity of everybody in there. He repeatedly lied through his teeth about his health care plan all during that speech.

CALLER: Exactly. So if the rules apply to the members, then… I mean, I don’t know. Do they specifically exempt him in those rules?

RUSH: The way you sum up the rules, the Democrats who — and Louise Slaughter, by the way… Oh, by the way, do you know the story out of Wichita? The guy who wrote the story, his last name is Stan Finger. The Dumpster story, Stan Finger is the guy who wrote it. What the House of Representatives did was basically ban accurate free speech. That clears the decks for Obama to show up any time he wants.