RUSH: A story here from a really devastated Washington Post today, headline says it all: ‘Historic Oil Spill Fails to Produce Gains for U.S. Environmentalists.’ Now, what kind of thinking must you have in order to look at the oil spill that way? You have to have a political agenda in mind. With each passing day there’s mounting evidence that this disaster is a tool, or it was a hoped to be a tool to advance a political agenda. ‘For environmentalists, the BP oil spill may be disproving the maxim that great 
tragedies produce great change,’ a maxim we have never heard before. We heard some talk about how a crisis should never go to waste, but I never heard this maxim that great tragedies produce great change? ‘Traditionally, American environmentalism wins its biggest victories after some important piece of American environment is poisoned, exterminated or set on fire.’ Well, what a movement to be part of, what a movement to be proud of. Your cause only accelerates and only advances when devastation happens. Come to think of it, that’s liberalism. Come to think of it, that’s the Democrat Party. Whenever devastation occurs, whenever destruction occurs, your political agenda advances.
What’s good for you, if you’re a Democrat and a leftist is not good for America, and what’s good for America is not good for you, and so the Washington Post here is bitterly disappointed, just sad as they can be over the fact that this BP oil spill has not made more environmentalist wackos out there. I’m sure that Obama and his boys were counting on this to be a big victory. ‘An oil spill and a burning river in 1969 led to new anti-pollution laws in the 1970s. The Exxon Valdez disaster helped create an Earth Day revival in 1990 and sparked a landmark clean-air law. But this year, the worst oil spill in U.S. history — and, before that, the worst coal-mining disaster in 40 years — haven’t put the same kind of drive into the debate over climate change and fossil-fuel energy,’ damn it.
What’s wrong with this country? The Washington Post wants to know. What’s wrong with America? Why aren’t we rising up against the energy producers? Our media masters have done their part. Oh. Anderson Cooper 124, CNN, is learning that it is perhaps a crime to go cover the BP oil spill. The regime is not letting people in there who want to report on this factually. Speaking of the regime, one more phrase from this Washington Post story: ‘The Senate is still gridlocked. Opinion polls haven’t budged much. Gasoline demand is going up, not down,’ damn it. ‘Environmentalists say they’re trying to turn public outrage over oil-smeared pelicans into action against more abstract things, such as oil dependence and climate change. But historians say they’re facing a political moment deadened by a bad economy, suspicious politics and lingering doubts after a scandal over climate scientists’ e-mails.’
How outrageous that the truth would get in the way. And this is what always happens to the left, what always happens to the Democrat Party, what always happens to leftists, the truth eventually gets in their way. The truth is what derails them. ‘The difference between now and the awakenings that followed past disasters is as stark as ‘on versus off,’ said Anthony Leiserowitz, a researcher at Yale University who tracks public opinion on climate change.’ I wonder how much his education cost him. ‘Hey, hey, Anthony, what do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘Well, dad, I want research public opinion on climate change at Yale University.’ ‘Well, that’s a great ambition, Little Anthony. I’m sure since nobody else is interested in it, you can own it.’ And apparently he does. Leiserowitz, I think that’s the correct pronouncing of his name, said, ‘People’s outrage is focused on BP. The spill hasn’t been automatically connected to some sense that there’s something more fundamentally wrong with our relationship with the natural world,’ because we are the natural world. We’re not apart from it. What is our relationship with the natural world? What are we, unnatural? Are we supernatural? Extranatural, what are we? Are we not part of nature? We have a relationship with it but we’re not part of it?
What this means is we obviously need more pictures of oil-smeared pelicans. Have you heard about the sea turtle that has fallen in love with a toy? Seriously. Obviously God wasn’t looking when they were passing out the genes in turtle creation. A turtle has now fallen in love with a toy turtle. And they try to tell me that lights will affect where turtles walk. ‘The story of 2010 is not that nothing happened after the BP spill, or after the coal-mine explosion that killed 29 in West Virginia on April 5. It’s that much of the reaction has focused on preventing accidents — on tighter scrutiny of rigs and mines — rather than broader changes in the use of oil and coal.’ Ah, it’s a dismal day, it’s a horrible day, the disaster is the disaster and it hasn’t worked. What good’s a disaster if it fails?
The disaster was supposed to be focused on tighter scrutiny of rigs and mines, and Obama’s doing his part. Have you heard, despite two court rulings overturning the moratorium Salazar said, to hell with it, we’re going to have a drilling moratorium anyway. He did. The hell with the courts. It’s lawlessness. Why isn’t Mr. Salazar held in contempt of court by the judges who have overruled his oil drilling moratorium twice? They’re gonna go ahead with it, which I predicted. Washington Post: ‘The story of 2010 is not that nothing happened after the BP spill,’ it’s that nothing happened restricting the use of oil and coal. What’s wrong with people? I join the Washington Post in asking this question. Why haven’t these two wonderfully timed accidents, the oil spill and the mine disaster, why haven’t they made us give up on mining for coal and drilling for oil? Why haven’t they? The regime gets it. Why do the American people not get it?
By the way, there’s polling data out there that is not good for the regime. Obama has fallen below 50% approval with white college-educated women. This is a milestone. I’m not trying to be funny about this. That is the base of the Democrat Party in many states, white college-educated women, and Obama is under 50% approval. It’s not a good day for the Washington Post, folks. I mean the stuff that they’re running today, they might want to have a suicide watch in the newsroom over there. ‘The Fading Embers of Obama’s Coalition,’ is the headline of a Mark Thiessen story. Here’s a quote. ‘Bottom line: Republicans are riding a wave of voter enthusiasm, while Democrats are fighting a rip current of bitterness among many of their core constituencies. To avoid getting swept out to sea, they are pandering desperately. But for those they are trying to appease, it may be too little too late. And for the rest of America, it is a sad reminder that change we can believe in has given way to politics as usual.’ (gasping) What an indictment. The Washington Post has just thrown Obama overboard. ‘Change we can believe in has given way to politics as usual,’ the fading embers.
And then Dan Balz and Jon Cohen, also in the Washington Post, about the Washington Post/ABC poll: ‘Confidence in Obama Reaches New Low.’ Not a happy day at the Washington Post. They are terribly shaken. First the oil spill has not resulted in any significant change in public opinion on global warming and climate change, neither did the coal mine disaster, and now the beloved leader of the regime is sinking faster than a rock in the Gulf of Mexico, being funneled down to stop the oil leak. ‘Obama’s overall standing puts him at about the same place President Bill Clinton was in the summer of 1994, a few months before Republicans captured the House and Senate in an electoral landslide.’ Also two years before Clinton won reelection, let’s not forget to mention that. Democrats are also outraged at Gibbs, the White House press secretary, for assuring a Republican victory in the House coming up in November, says he’s negatively impacting fundraising and is demoralizing the troops. The troops, based on what I read, based on what I see, based on what I hear when they call here, the leftist troops are demoralized. You had two big stories yesterday, 17,000-word pieces in The Nation and they’re not happy about anything happening. They’re disappointed, it’s not happening fast enough. There’s absolute misery on the left. And the Washington Post today is the singular chronicle of it all.
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RUSH: Let’s take a look at some of this polling news today from the Washington Post. First, Marc Thiessen: ‘The Fading Embers of Obama’s Coalition … The president has also angered many of the key Democratic constituencies he needs to keep control of the House and Senate, and now Democrats are blowing furiously on the fading embers of their electoral coalition, hoping to stave off disaster this November. In the process they are abdicating their responsibilities to govern — failing to pass a budget or any of their annual spending bills, while using their executive and legislative powers to appease their special interests instead.’ That’s the kind of stuff you usually only read about Republicans, but here’s the Washington Post: ‘The fading embers,’ they’re ‘blowing on the embers,’ ‘failing to pass a budget’?
The reason for that is they don’t want you to know what kind of tax increases are coming. They don’t want you to know exactly how rotten they intend to make it, and a budget battle publicly held with all hearings and so forth would clearly illustrate things the Democrats don’t want you to know. Mr. Thiessen writes’Take organized labor. Unions are incensed with Obama and congressional Democrats for their failure to deliver on key priorities such as card-check legislation. … To repair the breach, Democrats have turned their legislative agenda over to the unions,’ and that’s one of the reasons they’re in trouble. But why in the world are the unions unhappy? For crying out loud, the Jones Act was not waived so that help from foreign countries to stave off the oil disaster was not allowed in. The unions were bailed out in the process of buying General Motors and Chrysler. What in the world…?
This is the thing that amazes me: What in the world do these people have to be unhappy about? What in the world do they have to be angry about? They want the destruction of the US private sector; they’re getting it. They want the buildup of the public sector. They want never-ending pensions, never-ending health care plans. They want universal health care paid for by somebody else. They’re on their way to getting it. Why are they unhappy? Yet they are. One of the reasons they’re unhappy is because they systemically are not capable of happiness. Liberalism and happiness do not mix. They do not go together. Have you ever seen one? Have you ever seen a robustly happy liberal? Even the wealthiest, richest of these people, like Soros, they’re still burning with rage over things. Take your average Hollywood actor liberal. Are they happy? No. They’re running down to Venezuela, they’re running over to Haiti, they’re running down to Cuba to talk about how rotten things are here.
They’re talking about oppression, how they’re in jail, figuratively. They’re not happy, and yet they’re in the midst of more destruction that they have wanted than they have ever dreamed they would ever see. Now, one of the things that is contributing to their misery is obvious, and that is it doesn’t create a utopia. These people have grown up, they have been raised, they have been taught, they have been educated — to believe that their beliefs bring about universal love and happiness and contentment, and equality, and sameness, and no discrimination, and nobody ever dies, and nobody ever gets sick — but if somebody does get sick, they’re treated, and it doesn’t cost them anything. It was supposed to be a panacea, a virtual utopia, and they are seeing — right square in the eyes — that their utopia cannot happen; that there’s no such thing; that their policies, in fact, when fully implemented, lead to abject poverty, destruction, misery. And they didn’t have to wait for Obama. They coulda simply looked at Detroit or any other city or state that has been run by liberals unchecked or any country.
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RUSH: I want to go back to the fainting embers of Obama’s coalition, Washington Post. Another disenchanted constituency that they found at the WaPo is Hispanics. ‘Latino support for Obama has dropped 12 points since the start of the year, as anger has grown over the Democrats’ failure to make immigration reform a priority.’ Is that really true? Are we really gonna believe that? Are we going to believe the 12-point drop in Hispanics is because the Hispanics are unhappy that there hasn’t been amnesty? Can we ever stop to think that maybe Hispanics who are here legally want a job, too? Maybe it could well be that they happen to have assimilated and have become Americans and they don’t like what’s happening to the country, either? Could it be that a 12-point drop in Hispanics for Obama has nothing to do with amnesty? I don’t think it has a thing to do with amnesty because Obama’s making it clear he’s all for it, and Harry Reid’s making it clear he’s all for it. They’re suing the state of Arizona! My gosh, if you’re trying to woo the Hispanic vote on the basis of illegal immigration what more can you do to show your support for them and for illegal immigration and amnesty than to sue the state of Arizona.
Why, the conventional wisdom in politics is that Obama’s support among Hispanics should be 90%. We had a phone call yesterday, Sophia from Miami who said, ‘Rush, don’t buy into this notion that every Hispanic in this country wants amnesty for all these illegals. We don’t. We didn’t get it. Just because they’re Hispanic doesn’t mean we’re willing for them to be able to bypass the law when we weren’t able to.’ Twelve-point drop in Hispanic support since the start of the year. I’d say it’s ’cause the bloom’s off the rose. I’d say it’s because they were expecting all kinds of great things, jobs-wise, stimulus, economy growing, and it ain’t. And that’s why. That’s why every constituency group except the unions and African-Americans are abandoning Obama in droves. ‘But the drop in Hispanic support is dwarfed,’ says the Washington Post, ‘by the astounding 36-point drop in support for Obama from one of the most reliable Democratic constituencies: Jewish voters. Jewish Americans are outraged with Obama, says former New York Mayor Ed Koch. And it’s not because Obama’s middle name is Hussein. Obama alienated many in the Jewish community by reaching out to Iran while relentlessly criticizing Israel.’
I can’t believe this is in the Washington Post. They’re throwing in the towel. This is the kind of stuff you would read even if it weren’t true about Republicans. But this isn’t even half of it. The next story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen: ‘Confidence in Obama Reaches New Low, Washington Post-ABC News Poll Finds.’ Nearly 60% have no faith in Obama’s decision making, 60% from a devastated Washington Post. ‘A slim majority of all voters say they would prefer Republican control of Congress so that the legislative branch would act as a check on the president’s policies.’ They were specifically asked that and they said yes, we want somebody in there to stop this guy. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll, this is not good for Obama. He could have at least saved or created a few more jobs. Now, the Washington Post in both these stories makes this point. This is where Clinton was in 1994 and Clinton went on to a second term. We can’t let that happen for Obama. It’s a matter of time. Will Obama start triangulating? Will he go the Clinton route and abandon the public display of extreme liberalism and leftism and all of a sudden start trying to sound like a moderate? Will that happen? I don’t know.