RUSH: ‘White House officials are retooling the administration’s communications strategy to produce faster responses to political adversaries, a more disciplined focus on President Obama’s call for ‘change’ in Washington and an increasingly selective use of the president’s time. The messaging adjustments are the result of an end-of-the-year analysis in which White House advisers said the president’s communications team had not taken the initiative often enough and had allowed drawn-out debates in Congress, and relentless criticism by Republicans, to drown out his message.’ Now, wait just a second. Recall, ladies and gentlemen, as you hear me explain this new strategy the White House owns the press, they own Congress, the Democrats own the White House, they won a majority of voters (unlike Clinton), they had tremendous approval numbers, and now all of a sudden it comes down that they’re not getting their message out correctly?
They are fooling themselves up there. They’re lying to themselves. The message has gotten out plain as day. This is the one service that we have performed admirably among many others here at the EIB Network. Their message has gotten out loud and clear, clear as a bell. We repeat the message over and over and over again. What they’ve screwed up on is they have failed to do what Clinton did and that’s disguise and mask what they were trying to do. These people got so cocky and so full of themselves with their majority and the idea that Obama was loved and adored not just by the country but the whole world, that they could finally open up. ‘Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. This is what we’re about. This is how we’re going to make you dependent on us. This is how we’re gonna destroy the private sector. This is how we make sure that you only can go to government to get a job down the road. Most of what you get’s gonna be from the government down the line, even your car and your banking and your student loan.’
Oh, no, the ‘message’ got out plain as day. I love this. ”It was clear that too often we didn’t have the ball — Congress had the ball in terms of driving the message,’ communications director Dan Pfeiffer said.’ Bam gave ’em the ball! Obama gave Congress the ball. He didn’t come up with his own legislation. Theirs was the only legislation to be talked about. Anyway the story goes on and on and on. ‘Senior White House aides described the changes as an aggressive response, aimed at producing fresh momentum for the president’s faltering agenda and regaining the advantage ahead of the congressional midterm elections in November.’ Bring it on. This is crazy. In a companion story here from State-Controlled Associated Press: ‘Thrust into office on the veracity of hope, President Barack Obama is trying to get himself on the right side of a remarkably different national sentiment these days: anger.
‘Obama’s expansive domestic goals are largely the same, but his message is changing, now constructed around a concession that the public is disillusioned and wanting results. If he cannot show people that he understands their frustration and is working to fix it, the risks are real.’ So a second 
story here saying anger replaces hope, but it’s only because the message hadn’t gotten out yet. Listen, later in the story it says: ‘A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that two-thirds of people are either dissatisfied by the way the federal government is working or outright angry about it. And that’s a problem Obama now owns.’ It is his policies that are causing this anger! We go to the audio sound bites. On Morning Joe today on MessNBC, Scarborough was talking to Sam Stein of the Huffing and Puffington Post. Scarborough says, ‘Would it be damaging to [Obama’s] base to bring in Dick Cheney, talk to him a little bit about some of this stuff?’
STEIN: During the height of the health care debate, I was brought in with a bunch of other reporters to talk to some White House officials, and this is when Rush Limbaugh was making all these charges about death panels. And one of the questions that came up was: ‘Why not talk to Rush Limbaugh and see if you could persuade him that this is just a crazy charge that has no merit?’ And they said, ‘Uhhhh, we’re not going to do that because it would really be problematic for anyone else on the — on the left of the spectrum to see us talking with Rush Limbaugh.’ I think the whole thing continues with Cheney, too. I think eventually they’re going to try more diplomacy when it comes to the Cheney mind-set but, for now, ahhhh, I think they’re not going to invite him in for coffee or tea.
RUSH: Man, oh, man, oh, man. I don’t believe they were actually ever considering that. They would never bring me in. They knew they couldn’t talk me out of the death panels because the death panels 
were in the bill! They couldn’t talk me out of what I was saying because what I was saying about his health care plan was correct and he didn’t have one. He didn’t have a plan. By the way, do you know what? In advance of this meeting on February 25th — which I’m told now Mitch McConnell is going to take some of his leadership guys up to this meeting and they say they’re going to go on offense in this meeting. I don’t know how they’re going to do that because they’re not going to have the power to set the agenda. For the Republicans to go to this meeting thinking they’re going to go on the offense is like me telling you that a caller is going to determine how this radio program turns out each and every day.
It just isn’t going to happen. Nothing against callers, but I’m the head honcho here; the caller is not — and Obama is the head honcho in the White House whenever anybody goes up there to talk to him. The people going up to talk to him are not. So it will be interesting. Then in light of that Jon Kyl ‘threw more cold water on the chances that his party would cooperate with a Feb. 25 healthcare reform summit at the White House, protesting that Democrats already seem poised to force a bill through Congress. Speaking on CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ Kyl echoed a claim that congressional Republicans have made for the past week, that President Barack Obama and House and Senate Democrats intend the summit as a public display and not a genuine dialogue.
‘He quoted a recent Wall Street Journal article that asserted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has ‘set the stage’ for using reconciliation to pass the [health care]. That controversial legislative tactic could allow the bill to pass the Senate with 51 votes instead of 60′ as you know. He said, ‘I don’t know why we would be having a bipartisan summit down at the White House if they’ve already decided on this other process by which they’re going to jam the bill through.’ I don’t know how that squares with McConnell saying he’s going to take his leadership gang up there. I guess they’re just of the opinion, ladies and gentlemen, they can’t not go. But I, frankly, think that there’s nothing wrong with being the party of ‘no,’ especially at this point in time and on this issue. Let’s go to ABC’s This Week. During the roundtable Peter Beinart, The Daily Beast, said this about Cheney…
BEINART: Dick Cheney is not a bad guy to have a fight with. I mean, this is a guy whose opinion ratings at one point were lower than O.J. Simpson’s. One of the advantages when the opposition — when you — when you have an opposition party is you can define their leaders. You can choose the more unpopular guys. They picked a fight with Rush Limbaugh. Now they’re — they’re having the fight with Dick Cheney because he’s one of the more unpopular Republicans out there.
RUSH: Um, I don’t think these guys quite understand what’s happened out there. If I may? Mr. Beinart, with all due respect, my popularity is at an all-time high. Obama’s popularity is plunging big time — and Cheney is one of the most respected voices in the Republican Party. These guys are so detached from reality in the State-Controlled Media, it is laughable and humorous to watch it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Colbert King, Colby King is a columnist for the WaPo, the Washington Post. He was on public television’s Inside Washington on Saturday and compared me to the Taliban wing of the Republican Party.
KING: Rush Limbaugh, who represents I think the Taliban wing of the Republican Party, who is urging, urging the party in Washington to say ‘no,’ he said be the party of ‘no,’ resist compromise within, don’t try to work with this administration, you should be the party of ‘no’ ‘no’ ‘no,’ and that’s what they’re listening to.
RUSH: I don’t know if they’re listening to me or not but they’re doing the right thing. Why in the world, Colby — pardon me, folks. I know it’s pointless to try to educate these people inside the Beltway, especially Democrats and columnists, but what in the world is there to want to compromise with this administration on? This administration’s destroying the private sector on purpose. This administration is trying to take over one-sixth of the US economy. And, by the way, I’m talking about health care, and one thing we need to keep pounding and reminding everybody, Obama’s health care proposals are not intended to help the people. They are intended to help the Democrat Party, and that’s why Obama keeps pushing it.
And I’m told about this February 25th meeting, folks, that Obama’s actually going to put together his own health care proposal. He’s actually going to have a bill.
Now, why do you think that is? Who in the world has been reminding everybody that poor old Obama never even had a bill? It was I, the Taliban wing of the Republican Party. You know, let me ask you something, Colby. You think your real enemy is us? The real enemy is the real Taliban and the real Al-Qaeda, and it would be nice if people like you had a little bit more serious take on them than political opponents who simply support capitalism, freedom, and liberty and see no reason to compromise with people who don’t believe in any of that. Where is the compromise between right and wrong? Where’s the compromise between good and evil? If I believe in liberty, free market capitalism and all that, where is there any area of compromise with this administration? If I think the federal government has no business running health care to any greater extent than they already do, why should I entertain any bit of compromise with them, why should I accept their premise, Colby? I disagree with every premise.
We’re here to defeat them. We’re here to politically defeat them and see to it their agenda does not succeed. And when was the last time, Colby, you asked the Democrats to compromise with me? When’s the last time you asked the Democrats to compromise with Newt Gingrich or George W. Bush? You guys have this one-way street, you have this august view of yourselves as in power in perpetuity, as a birthright and we’re just a bunch of little ankle biters knocking around bugging you people, a bunch of Chihuahuas and we gotta start healing, ‘Yes master.’ We gotta run around and when you say ‘sit’ we sit, when you say ‘heel’ we heel, when you say ‘lay down’ we lay down. It ain’t that way, Colby. There’s nothing to compromise with here. Zilch, zero. Do you think I want the federal government owning car companies or banks? You know what’s happening? Folks, I’m going to tell you what’s happening. Everybody thinks Wall Street is a bunch of Republicans, big, evil, rich Republicans. Hell, folks, do you realize Walmart even wants a national health care plan? What’s happened, and, Colby, this is another reason why there’s no compromise, not here. And I don’t speak for the Republican Party, Taliban wing or any other.
But I’m going to tell you something, what happened here is crony, quote, unquote, crony capitalism, these guys on Wall Street, the Jamie Dimons of the world and Lloyd Blankfeins of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs respectively, instead of doing business to please their customers are now in business with the government to make sure they’re not killed, to make sure they’re not harmed. Walmart focuses on their customers but they’re also lobbying Washington big time to make sure Obama doesn’t nationalize them. So you have in the old days, the last time this happened was World War II. But that was ’cause there was a war on and it made sense. But there’s no war on right now, other than the Taliban wing of the Republican Party and its war against Obama and the Democrats. But that’s hardly World War II. Although — well, wait a minute. The country is under assault, more so than when we were in World War II, other than from the Japanese. But the Germans never attacked us, the Japanese did.
Regardless, what’s happening here is that major US corporations are getting in bed with the federal government for favorable treatment, government contracts or what have you rather than focusing on pleasing customers, growing their ranks in the traditional free market capitalist way. This has gotta stop and the only reason it’s happening is because you got people in Washington scaring the hell out of everybody, but they’re talking big money. So if you could become part of the Obama big time government machine and guarantee yourself ongoing profits because government’s your biggest customer then that’s what you’re going to do. They’ll follow the lay of the land. This has gotta stop, Colby. The greatest country on earth will cease being if these guys have any success with any part of this agenda of theirs and so there is no compromise. This health care bill, it’s not about helping the people. Show me one aspect of it that does, show me where premiums come down, show me where more people are insured, show me where overall costs decline. None of that happens. All that happens is that people become more and more dependent on government.
They already nationalized the student loan program, and I got a story here from the Wall Street Journal, I think some woman owes $550,000, that’s how much it cost her to become a doctor. Now, people are not going to be able to pay back that kind of debt over the course of their lives. People are going to start asking is an education worth that? Five hundred and fifty grand. Now, that’s because she’s defaulted on some payments early on because she didn’t have the money, but I mean government doesn’t mind that. The more indentured servitude we have to the government the better people like Obama and the Democrats in Congress like it. Why do I want to compromise with that, Colby? I don’t want to compromise with any aspect of this. They’re not doing health care to help the people. They are intending to do this to help the Democrat Party. That’s why Obama keeps pushing it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Colby King, Saturday, was on public television’s Inside Washington criticizing me. You know, back in the old days, Colby, your job as a columnist — as an esteemed member of the fourth estate or the fifth column — was to be critical of people who have real power: The government. Colby, no matter what I believe I can’t change your life at all. I may make you miserable, but I can’t raise your taxes, I can’t send your kids off to war, and I can’t take away your health care. You guys used to criticize government. Now you criticize the critics. Stop and think of that. You’re out there criticizing the critics. I mean, I’m honored to be a target. I enjoy it.