RUSH: As usual, to the left Christine O’Donnell represents an opportunity for them to focus on narratives and templates that they use to identify conservatives as nutcases and freaks. So in this bite, you’re gonna hear Wolf Blitzer focus on evolution. Now, it’s an article of faith with the left that there is no creation. There’s no intelligent design. We’re all here, essentially, by accident. Big Bang, and we’ve all just evolved, and anybody he doesn’t think that — in the playbook, anybody who doesn’t think that — is an absolute certifiable nutcase. So listen to the first sound bite here at the University of Delaware between the Marxist bearded guy Chris Coons and Christine O’Donnell. Wolf Blitzer says, ‘In a TV appearance back in 1988 on Bill Maher’s show you said evolution is a myth. Do you believe evolution’s a myth?’
O’DONNELL: I was talking about what a local school taught, and that should be decided by the local community. But please let me respond to what he just said —
BLITZER: We will let you respond, but answer the question. Do you believe evolution is a myth?
O’DONNELL: Local schools should make that decision. I made that remark based on —
BLITZER: But what do you — what do you believe?
KARIBJANIAN: What do you believe?
O’DONNELL: What I believe is irrelevant.
BLITZER: Why is it irrelevant?
O’DONNELL: Because what I support —
BLITZER: The voters want to know what you think.
O’DONNELL: What I will support in Washington, DC, is the ability for the local school system to decide what is taught in their classrooms, and what I was talking about on that show was a classroom that was not allowed to teach creationism as an equal theory as evolution. That is against their constitutional rights, and that is an overreaching arm of the government.
RUSH: But you hear Blitzer here: ‘Well, I want you to answer the question! What do you think about evolution? What do you think about evolution? The voters want to know what you think about evolution! Voters care, voters want to know!’ Wolf, you know what the voters care about… You’d be working a different network if you cared what the voter’s cared about. Wolf, you’d have a different job if you knew what the voters cared about. You’d have higher ratings, Wolf, if you knew what voters cared about. You’d actually have an audience, Wolf, if you knew what voters cared about. They don’t care right now about what somebody thinks about evolution. They want jobs, Wolf, and they’re tired of government getting so big! But this is one of these… I’m having a mental block on what evolution is. It’s one of these things that engenders a knee-jerk reaction to these people. Ann Coulter calls it a ‘heckling point.’ It’s a way for them to heckle and to try to portray right-wingers as kooks, which is what they think in the first place. So that’s the answer, and I thought she parried it pretty well. Blitzer is forcing her to explain her beliefs in evolution, and she persisted and insisted and triumphed at explaining what she was talking about: In essence, the context. So after endless questioning on her past statements, she then nailed Coons on the ‘bearded Marxist’ article.
O’DONNELL: He said these statements that we made should be taken into consideration when casting your vote. So then I would be remiss not to bring up the fact that my opponent has recently said that it was studying under a Marxist professor that made him become a Democrat. So when you look at his position on things like raising taxes — which is one of the tenets of Marxism — not supporting eliminating the death tax — which is a tenet of Marxism — I would argue that there are more people who support my Catholic faith than his Marxist beliefs. And I’m using —
KARIBJANIAN: Well, let him clarify!
O’DONNELL: — his own words.
RUSH: ‘L-l-l-l-et him clarify! L-l-l-l-et him clarify! L-l-l-l-et him clarify!’
‘I’m using his own words.’
She’s making a point. If you want to bring up the fact that I made a joke about dabbling in witchcraft on a comedy show way back then, well, it certainly is right to focus on this bearded Marxist and saying that a communist professor is what inspired him to become a Democrat, which I thought was pretty clever. Chris Coons ‘clarified.’
COONS: There was a group of folks who I had shared a room with, my roommates junior year, who were in the Young Republican Club and who thought when I returned from Kenya and registered as a Democrat that doing so was proof that I’d gone all the way over to the far left end. And so they jokingly called me ‘a bearded Marxist.’ If you take five minutes and read the article it’s clear on the face of it, it was a joke. Despite that my opponent and lots of folks in the right wing media have endlessly spun this. I am not now nor have I ever been anything but (snickering) a clean-shaven capitalist.
RUSH: That’s probably the first time he’s said that. So then he comes out, says like Joe Manchin in West Virginia, ‘Hey, I’m a Reagan Republican.’ Well, Coons may have shaved his beard, but he has shaved off his Marxism and just because he wants to sit there and call him a capitalist doesn’t make it so. So he was put on the defensive. He had to finally explain this. The bottom line is it was a wacko professor, a Marxist professor that inspired him to become a Democrat. After Coons tried to say his ‘bearded Marxist’ article was a joke, here’s what Christine O’Donnell said…
O’DONNELL: If you’re saying what I said on a comedy show is relevant to this election, then absolutely you writing an article — forget the ‘bearded Marxist’ comment, you writing an article —
COONS: Here’s the point —
O’DONNELL: — saying that you learned your beliefs from ‘an articulate, intelligent Marxist professor,’ and that’s what made you become a Democrat, that should send chills up the spine of every Delaware voter.
RUSH: So she comes right back at him, and the whole room… Well, Wolf Blitzer and the female moderator lined up against her as well as Coons. I thought she had a decent presence and a great presence of mind, and from these bites — I didn’t see it, but from these bites — it doesn’t sound like she was talked off her game. And she got her digs in, and she said things about Coons that the media will not, and she asked questions about Coons that the media won’t, and she would not allow the media to paper over things about Coons that the media would paper over. So people learned some things about Coons that they otherwise wouldn’t know because the media in Delaware will not tell them. So, all in all, from what I’ve heard so far it’s pretty good. We have lots more to go on this. One more. Let’s see, da-da-da-da. What was that? That was number seven? I’ve already put it back in the stack. Seven’s coming up. Seven’s… All right. Right. So Coons answers the question during the debate: ‘Why should the voters of Delaware trust a Democrat this time around?’ And now the moderator, Nancy Karibjanian, ‘Ms. O’Donnell, you have one minute for a rebuttal here.’
O’DONNELL: Unemployment here in New Castle County rose, almost doubled in the last two years under his watch as New Castle county executive. … [H]e will continue to rubber-stamp the spending policies coming from Washington. We were promised that the stimulus bill would create jobs. But instead it cost us 2.6 million jobs. We were promised that it would keep unemployment at 8%, but instead we see unemployment at 9.7%. The Democrats are bragging that unemployment has leveled out, but while unemployment has leveled out, more people than ever are on food stamps and our welfare spending is higher than ever. This is not the right move. This is not a move towards real economic recovery. This is a move towards creating a culture of dependency.
RUSH: I got no problem with that. You have any problem with that, Snerdley? I don’t see any problem with that. The reason I’m reacting this way is I’m reading some e-mail and people are saying, ‘Ahhhhh, she didn’t do her a whole lot of good but she really didn’t get hurt, either.’ So I’m balancing what people’s opinions is of the debate as they’ve expressed them to me versus what I am hearing because I didn’t see it myself last night.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I know, I know, I know. I got 15 e-mails I’m trying to answer here. I got a DirecTV receiver at home that’s not working, that somebody needs some input on so they can fix. Look, folks, we multitask here. We do all kinds of things on this program behind the scenes that you never hear.
I’m going to tell you something about this Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons debate. By the way, this Chris Coons guy has a diary at the Daily Kos website, which is left-wing kookville. He runs around out there and he wants to talk about how he now is a free-market capitalist? That’s a bunch of bohunk. This guy is a bearded Marxist without the beard. He may have shaved the beard; he hasn’t shaved the Marxism. You know what I’ll bet you? Do you remember after Christine O’Donnell — even before she won the primary, but even afterwards — all the erudite elites on our side who were wringing their hands together? ‘Oh, no! Oh, no! There goes the Republican majority, Christine O’Donnell. We had to have Mike Castle. We had to have Mike Castle. We had to have a RINO.’
And then Mike Murphy, Georgetown political consultant said, ‘Okay! Okay, you guys,’ speaking to people like me and you, ‘You know how to win elections. You go in there and you move to Delaware. You run her campaign. Sarah Palin, you know how to do this, you go in there run her campaign.’ All right. So she had her first debate last night. I’m hearing this for the first time. I didn’t watch the show. I’m impressed. I think this is good. I think she’s quite good, what I’ve heard so far. You know what I will bet you? I will bet you that there are some on our side in the blogosphere, the media, so forth, who probably think the same thing — that were not O’Donnell people going in who think she won this thing handily. I’ll bet there are a lot of people who were surprised, who thought she hadn’t a prayer, didn’t have any kind of a chance. Let’s go back and resume here at audio sound bite number eight. Wolf Blitzer…
You know what these guys…? I finally figured out this evolution bit. They think everybody Republican is Jerry Falwell. They think every Republican is Pat Robertson and they’re just waiting for somebody to slip up and prove it. Everybody is a right-wing kook Christian; everybody is a Southern hick pro-lifer. You know, that’s the template that they have of conservatives. Wolf Blitzer is falling right in line. I still laugh at Wolf Blitzer saying to Christine O’Donnell, ‘The voters want to know what you think about evolution.’ Wolf, if you knew what the voters wanted you’d have an audience. If you knew what the voters wanted, you wouldn’t be at CNN. CNN hasn’t the slightest clue what the voters want as evidenced by the fact that the voters don’t watch. For crying out loud, 500,000 people? We have that on one street corner in New York every half hour.
At any rate, back now to the sound bites. Wolf Blitzer to Christine O’Donnell (snidely): ‘What specifically, Ms. O’Donnell, would you do specifically, Ms. O’Donnell, to specifically create jobs. What would you do?’
O’DONNELL: What I think? The best thing the government can do to get our economy back on real economic recovery is to get out of the way of the small business owner, to get out of the way of the entrepreneur, and the way you do that is to make sure these tax hikes don’t come in January. You begin to roll back some of the regulation that’s forced them to close their doors. A couple things that I’m proposing: Number one, a temporary two-year tax holiday on the capital gains tax to give investors the money they need to reinvest in business. To permanently eliminate the death tax —
RUSH: Yeah?
O’DONNELL: — that’s not only an unjust bill because we paid taxes while we saved it, but it will also create 1.5 million new jobs.
RUSH: Okay, so they say, ‘What would you do to create jobs?’ She rattles off some concrete proposals. Do you think we’d-a heard that from Mike Castle? We’d-a heard the same kind of thing when Linda McMahon asked what’s-his-face, that pencil neck geek up in Connecticut, Blumenthal. This guy… I’ll tell you. (doing Dick Blumenthal impression) ‘I’m proud of my service. I’m proud of the time that I served our country in Vietnam,’ when he didn’t! ‘I’m proud of my service in Vietnam.’ I see this guy and I just want to ram a Big Mac down his throat. ‘Eat something!’ Anyway, would Castle have been able to rattle off things like this? When Blumenthal was asked what he’d do to create jobs (doing impression), ‘Well, jobs are to be created, and I’m for that. We love jobs in Connecticut. I’m proud of the work I’ve done to create them.’ I mean, that’s the kind of gobbledygook we got. She was able to rattle this off rat-tat-tat-tat. What’s next? Wolf Blitzer says (snidely), ‘Well, where did you get those numbers? Where did you get those numbers you’re talking about?
O’DONNELL: The Department of Labor statistics, and we’ll have them on our website by tomorrow. But I want to point out that he said that we’re not creating a culture of dependency. How would you explain what is happening when unemployment is leveled out but more and more people are on food stamps? We’ve gotta ask ourselves: What do we want Delawareans to be receiving, food stamps or paychecks? I say paychecks.
COONS: Obviously paychecks. We’d like to have Americans be able to receive the benefits that they need to get through incredibly difficult times. But to simply denounce people as being ‘dependent’ because they’re applying for and receiving food stamps —
O’DONNELL: Oh, Chris, that’s not fair.
COONS: — in the worst recession in modern times —
O’DONNELL: That’s not fair of you to say that.
COONS: — is frankly slandering people in difficult times.
O’DONNELL: That’s not fair of you to say that because that’s not at all what I’m doing.
RUSH: This is predictable, too. ‘Obviously paychecks. We’d like to have Americans be able to receive the BENEFITS they need to get through the…’ That’s another buzzword the left is always focused on: Benefits. You gotta orient yourself so you get the ‘benefits’ that you are owed. How many of you, when you think about what it means to be an American, tabulate the ‘benefits’ in tangible terms? Benefits that transfer payments, in-kind payments that you are owed or that you are gonna get? Is that what you contemplate when you contemplate being an American? ‘Yeah, I’m gonna add up my benefits.’ You can tell by this guy’s language: ‘We’d like to have Americans be able to receive the benefits they need to get through incredibly difficult times.’ The best thing people have is themselves, and the biggest obstacle people have to overcome is people like this Coons guy who thinks the benefits and government transfer payments, redistribution of wealth, that’s the essence of fairness in his warped mind. She wasn’t talking about anything at all like he tried to characterize her. Anyway, Coons was not happy about the ad that’s being run on the Internet calling him ‘Coons The Taxman,’ which is a very creative ad. It’s very funny ad. Wolf Blitzer said to Coons, ‘Okay, I’ll have you respond to this.’
COONS: We’re gonna try to have a conversation here this evening rather than just a diatribe if we possibly could.
O’DONNELL: (chuckles)
COONS: I think it would be helpful to have an exchange of ideas and let each of us take turns. So thank you for moderating, Wolf. I think it’s important to look closely at some of the things Ms. O’Donnell has thrown out on her new website. Most of them are untrue. Some of them are flat-out lies, some of them are mischaracterizations, some of them are just factually untrue. So I’m not going to stop every single time there’s something she throws out that I disagree or I think is factually untrue.
RUSH: (crying) ‘It’s not fair! (sobbing) She’s got a website, be I’m gonna be a man about it but I want to stop and cry about it. I’ll let Wolf Blitzer give me the chance to whine and cry about it.’ There is one episode in the debate that people have focused on and the media has seized on this as her ‘Sarah Palin moment.’ The female moderator Nancy Karibjanian said, ‘We’ve talked about the Supreme Court. Obviously, a United States senator has the opportunity to determine, in a way, the makeup of the court. So what opinions of late that have come from our high court do you most object to?’
O’DONNELL: Oh, gosh. Give me a specific one. I’m sorry.
KARIBJANIAN: Actually, I can’t because I need you to tell me which ones you object to.
O’DONNELL: I’m very sorry. Right off the top of my head? I know that there are a lot, but I’ll put it up on my website, I promise you.
BLITZER: Well, we know you disagree with Roe v. Wade.
O’DONNELL: Yeah, but that wasn’t recent. She said ‘a recent one.’ She said ‘of late.’
BLITZER: That’s relatively recent.
O’DONNELL: Not Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade —
RUSH: Gee, whiz!
O’DONNELL: — if that were overturned would not make abortion illegal in the United States. It would put the power back to the states.
RUSH: What an idiot this guy is! I mean this was a genuine opportunity for him to bury her, and he goes back to 1973 ’cause he wants a discussion on abortion. He wanted abortion in the debate. I don’t know. I have brain freezes like that all the time, and everybody would acknowledge how smart I am. Everybody acknowledges how informed I am. I’m not bragging. I’m informed. I have a great memory. You all constantly tell me this. But if I’m doing an interview is and somebody says, ‘What are your top ten favorite movies?’ I freeze. I can think of one. I always come up with one, The Graduate, and after that I can’t think of nine other movies. So there’s something… (interruption) Secretariat, but that’s only ’cause I saw it Friday.
Okay, all right: Recent Supreme Court decision you disagree with. Three: Kelo. That’s what I woulda said. What I’m saying is I’m not gonna give her negative marks on this because I have brain freezes like this, and it’s a specific question. When you’re asked to name one thing… I remember the first time I did Brinkley I had one of my most famous brain freezes. Brinkley interviewed me on his This Week with David Brinkley show, and during the interview he says, ‘You know, there’s no one like you. There’s no one like you,’ and I thanked him. At the end of the interview he asked, ‘Okay, if you’re president, what would you do?’ (chuckles) I sat there for 20 seconds. I said nothing. Brain freeze. Because I’ve never thought about running for president. It’s not something I ever thought about.
You know, I thought about what the country needs but never from the standpoint of my having the ability to wave a wand or use power to make it happen. I had a 20-second brain freeze. I’m panicking. You know, ‘Oh, my gosh, if, of everything in this interview, they use this 20 seconds of silence that can kill me. They can ruin my career right here if they use this,’ and he had two associate producers in the room, and they were just staring at me, and I’m literally frozen. I don’t know how many of you this happens to, but I do have brain freezes now and then with specific kinds of questions. (interruption) What? (interruption) Well, I know it happened to Ted Kennedy. That’s right. Roger Mudd asked, ‘Why do you want to be Kennedy?’ (muttering)
‘Well, uhhh, uhhh, uhhhh…’
That’s true. It happened to Ted Kennedy. Anyway, that was the lone instance where they can, ‘A-ha! Sarah Palin moment,’ which a Sarah Palin moment is when she said, ‘I can see Russia from my backyard.’ She supposedly said, ‘I’ve got foreign policy experience. I can see Russia from my backyard,’ which I actually don’t think that she said.