RUSH: Harold Ickes says that AP got it wrong, that she’s not quitting, that she’s not a quitter, that the Hillary press office got it all wrong, she’s not going anywhere. That’s what he says. You’ll hear it here in just a second. Greetings, my friends, and welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Great to be with you. The program chock full today. Lots to do. Here’s the phone number if you want to be on the program. 800-282-2882. And the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
Here’s the AP story. Beth Fouhy, about a half hour ago: ‘Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation’s first female president. … The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City. She will pledge to continue to speak out on issues like health care. But for all intents and purposes, the two senior officials said, the campaign is over. Most campaign staff will be let go and will be paid through June 15, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge her plans.’ This caused a firestorm. The Punk, Terry McAuliffe, went out there, (paraphrasing) ‘This is not true. She is not ending the campaign. She is not conceding the nomination.’ And then Harold Ickes showed up on TV today. MSNBC Live, the host Tamron Hall talking to Harold Ickes via phone. She said, ‘I was told that you’re quite upset about this AP report, to say the least.’
ICKES: The report, as our press office has put out in a press statement, is inaccurate and wrong. I was also told that I had referred that — had told someone on Capitol Hill yesterday that it was over. Nothing could be further from the truth. I talked to a number of people on Capitol Hill yesterday and said that Mr. Obama does not have the nomination, will not have the nomination, in my view he won’t have it tonight nor will Mrs. Clinton and they’re going to continue to make their case to the uncommitted superdelegates.
RUSH: Then she says, ‘Well, what’s she going to say?’ and Ickes sort of loses his temper here.
ICKES: She will say what she will say when she says it.
HALL: I’m not good with puzzles, so —
ICKES: Well, look, I’m not — I’m not —
HALL: Yeah. I understand.
ICKES: My name is Harold Ickes.
HALL: Right.
ICKES: My name is not Hillary Rodham Clinton, and I am not going to speculate on what she is going to say and I would assume that, you know, I — you’re — you’re going to be entertaining a lot of speculation between —
HALL: Right.
ICKES: — now and whenever. I am not in the speculation business.
RUSH: So he doesn’t know what she’s going to say, but he knows that she’s not quitting. You know, this all started, ladies and gentlemen, it all started with the wife of a president running for president. The first time in the history of the country, the wife of a president wanted the job. And how is it ending up for the wife of the president? Well, he’s suggested that she’s stepping down. Two days before she will announce or won’t announce that she’s stepping down, Clinton said yesterday something along the lines of, (doing Clinton impression) ‘This may be the last time you see me at one of these kinds of events,’ meaning either San Diego or South Dakota campaigning and whatever she says tonight will be second fiddle to the ex-president’s catchy name for a condom. He called Todd Purdum a scumbag. In the old days — Dawn, you’re quite young and innocent, clear and pure as the wind-driven snow. Why do you think scumbag is such a bad word? Why do you think a lot of radio program directors will not let the word be used? It’s because it’s what you people used to call condoms.
So Clinton’s out there, called Todd Purdum a condom essentially, the guy who wrote the Vanity Fair piece. But it’s just one of these amazing things. She’s on the verge, the polling data says, of a huge upset coming in South Dakota tonight. She might win this thing by 26 to 30 points in South Dakota, losing in Montana. A lot of you women out there — and I understand, I relate to it, I understand, we’ve talked to you on the phones the past couple days, you Clinton supporting females, you’re very upset, you’re very angry about this, but down through our nation’s history, many men have run for president. Some men never got through the nomination process. Some got the nomination, but not the big prize. The record shows for every man who won the presidency, another man lost. In the case of Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, other third-party candidates, two or more men lost.
So I have a question for those of you that I am dubbing to be members of ‘Hillary’s Heartbroken.’ How can women demand a woman winner when they first can’t tolerate a woman loser? Look at how long men have been losing in these races? I’m just asking. I mean, I’m sympathetic to it. I’m trying to help ’em out here. I’m trying to help ’em out through their angst. It’s as though women are not supposed to lose, that it’s somehow sexism if a woman loses. But men lose in these races all the time, Snerdley. Well, I know men win every time, too, that’s a good point. Oh, well. It’s just a sad day in the neighborhood for many of the Clinton supporters, ladies and gentlemen. Take your mind and let it wander back about 18 months ago when you were singing this to yourselves in the shower.
(playing of I Am Woman)
I think otherwise.
(continued playing of song)
So she’s not going to suspend the campaign, right? How does this look? Can you imagine what an Iraq surrender would look like?
(continued playing of song)
No.
(continued playing of song)
No.
(continued playing of song)
No longer.
(continued playing of song)
Uhhh, yeah. So what?
(continued playing of song)
Loving? Ha!
(continued playing of song)
No, you’ll be aborted.
(continued playing of song)
No longer.
(continued playing of song)
Oh, jeez.
(continued playing of song)
I hated that song when I was a DJ and had to play it, I hate it now.
RUSH: Carol in Chehalis, Washington, you’re up first today on the EIB Network. Great to have you here. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush, it’s great to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I just wanted to tell you that, as a Republican woman, it just kind of gives me a sick feeling in my stomach the way the elitist Democrat Party has treated Hillary, and I can’t stand her, but I still am so put off by the way that they’ve treated her and the way that they select their nominee by not really letting the people of the party elect who it is because they’re obviously too stupid —
RUSH: Wait a second, though. No, wait a second. You have to understand the Clintons were the author of these rules. Well, the superdelegate rules have been around since 1980, Bob Beckel was the author, but I mean the whole plan of having these early primaries with the vast majority of them concluding by February 5th, that was by design, that was to end this early, save Hillary a lot of money and get her the nomination early. The Clintons were in this; they understood it; they understood the rules; they participated in this heavy primary schedule. The Democrat Party didn’t mistreat her that way. In what way was she mistreated by them?
CALLER: Well, I think that the way that the Democratic Party has it set up, I don’t understand, but the Republican Party, you know, you win the primary, you get the delegate. But then you get a piece of these and a piece of those and then the superdelegates can actually decide, why do they have superdelegates? I heard Bob Beckel say once, he never repeated it, that they originally put those in place to keep Ted Kennedy from becoming their nominee, because they want to control who their nominee is and not let the party or, rather, the regular people select who their nominee is. And I think that she’s been treated poorly because they want to ride on the gravy train — they would rather offend the women than the black people. They had to choose which of those they would rather offend.
RUSH: You have a point. It came down to who do we offend the most and get hurt the least, and they figured that they’ve been stomping on women for a number of years and getting away with it, they figured they could not stomp on the black vote and so they had to go along with this. I have to tell you, the superdelegate thing, I haven’t heard Beckel say that the reason for the superdelegates was to keep Ted Kennedy from getting the nomination. The real root of the superdelegate that I’ve heard, the theory behind it was to prevent the party from nominating a loser like George McGovern, which happened in 1972. Now, Ted Kennedy came along in 1980, and the superdelegate process was in place, but I think you’re right about one thing, the Democrats — and this is a lesson for everybody — not only do they not trust their own voters to do the right thing in the primary process, they do not trust any voters throughout the country to do the right thing, and that’s why they want all of their liberal judges in as many courts as possible from the top to the bottom, so that laws can be written independently of the elected officials. And judges, of course, as you know, do not stand for reelection, they are immune to election, so even if the country someday en masse despises liberals, their idea is to have enough liberal judges and enough liberal bureaucrats that never run for office that they can afford to lose elections and still have liberalism poisoning the culture from as many different spots as possible.