HILLARY: Well, it will be me, but, of course, I’m ready to support the Democratic nominee, whoever that is.
COURIC: I know that you’re confident it’s going to be you, but there is the possibility it won’t be. And, clearly, you have considered that possibility.
HILLARY: No, I haven’t. I get up every day intending to meet and reach as many people as possible. Then I go to bed at night and I get up and I do it all over again.
COURIC: So you never even consider the possibility?
HILLARY: I don’t. I don’t.
RUSH: Yeah, she’s making it pretty clear there, folks, she is inevitable. So then Couric says, ‘Well, I asked her about the new more aggressive tone of her campaign.’
HILLARY: It’s time. I have absorbed a lot of attacks for several months now. My opponents have basically had a free rein. I tried to bring Democrats together…
RUSH: Ohhhh…
HILLARY: …talked about where we are different from Republicans…
RUSH: Ohhhh…
HILLARY: …the Republicans have attacked me as well…
RUSH: Ohhhh…
HILLARY: …which I think is also a badge of honor.
RUSH: Ohhhh…
HILLARY: But after you’ve been attacked as often as I have…
RUSH: Ohhhh…
HILLARY: …from several of my opponents, you can’t just absorb it.
RUSH: Ohhhh…
HILLARY: You have to respond.
RUSH: Ohhhh…
HILLARY: Hardly a day goes by when I’m not attacked.
RUSH: Ohhhh…
HILLARY: And I just figure that it’s about time now for me to draw the contrast.
RUSH: Really? She’s only now going on the attack. (laughing) Don’t you just love that? She’s absorbed so many hits. She’s taken more than she can absorb. You just can’t absorb it all. You have to respond. By the way, this is manifesting itself, this attack, if you will, Hillary and Obama are in a snit over who is going to control more people with their health care plan. ‘A new front in the Clinton-Obama rumble will open today, Clinton delivering a speech in Iowa at 1:15 Eastern…’ so I guess the speech is ongoing right now, ‘…that will press the idea that you can’t call yourself a change candidate if you produce a weak plan for the key domestic challenge facing the country today, health care.’ That’s what she’s going to say about Obama. ‘Obama’s aides are pushing back by arguing that Clinton in the nineties opposed an individual mandate for health care just as Obama opposes one now. Clinton in a 1994 speech circulated Wednesday morning by a rival campaign…’ probably the Obama campaign, ‘The only examples we have of individual mandates are those like auto insurance requirements in many states’ — this is Mrs. Clinton speaking — ‘in spite of the fact that the state has access to all drivers through the licensing process, literally thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of drivers, remain uninsured in states with such an individual mandate.’
We’re back to mandates again. These people, I asked you at the beginning of the program, if you weren’t here, I asked you to listen to Democrats talk, listen to the presidential candidates talk, listen to their elected officials, Senate and House, and just count the number of times you hear them use the word ‘freedom’ in the context of this country and the way it was founded and the way it survives, individual liberty and freedom. Count the number of times you hear them discuss that, either conceptually or using the word freedom. You’re going to be waiting a long time. They’re into some mandates. The Breck Girl actually said in his health care thing a couple days ago, (paraphrasing) ‘You’re not going to have a choice, you show up at any government agency, be it to pay your taxes, get a driver’s license, you are going to have to sign a form and sign up for health care. You are not going to have a choice.’ This is your liberal Democrat Party today. The instances in which they will discuss liberty and freedom are so few and far between, I can’t recall the last time I heard a Democrat discuss it, especially one of these presidential candidates.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Carrie in Long Island, it’s great to have you here. Thank you for calling.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: This is a former Democrat, George W. Bush-loving listener, first-time caller.
RUSH: I appreciate that.
CALLER: I have a theory about why President Clinton is saying goofy things that seem designed to torpedo Hillary’s chance at the White House. I think he is trying to torpedo her chance. My idea is that, you know, if she does become president, she’s immediately a wartime president. That means she’s immediately already a more compelling, more relevant president than he could have been as a peacetime president, and I think also any move she makes as a wartime president will be compared to everything he didn’t do in the 1990s, you know, when the USS Cole was attacked or when our holdings in various embassies were attacked. I think anything she does as a wartime president will be shown in light of all his inaction as president. I think that his ego is just not going to be able to tolerate it.
RUSH: Interesting theory, especially coming from a woman. That makes it even more interesting to me.
CALLER: Wiser, too.
RUSH: Uh, yes. Yes.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: (laughter) You’re a sneaky one. That’s usually the kind of thing I say.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Well, it is curious. I was reading something earlier today, Radar Online, gossip magazine or something, gossip and news, and they’ve got this interview with Ben Bradley who is now 86, he was the editor of the Washington Post and is married to Sally Quinn, who used to be, back when Democrats ran Washington, the social doyenne. You didn’t get your bona fides in Washington ’til Sally Quinn invited you to a dinner party and kissed your ring, or you had to kiss hers, and there hadn’t been any dinner parties going on because the Republicans run the show and Sally Quinn and Ben Bradley don’t care to have the Bushes over. They did have the Clintons over. Ben Bradley in this interview was asked what he thinks about Hillary. He said, ‘I like her more than some of the people under my roof,’ meaning his wife, Sally, and he goes on to say, ‘I’m amazed at the number of women who do not like her.’ Now, the circle that Ben Bradley and Sally Quinn travel in is the Drive-By Media, super-elite Washington press corps.
CALLER: Well, can I tell you: As a woman, I have friends on both sides of the aisle, because like I say, I’m a former Democrat. I don’t know a woman who likes Hillary. No, that’s not true. I do know one woman who likes Hillary, but, you know, she’s my sister, and what can I do? (laughs)
RUSH: Well, what is the reason the ones who don’t like her don’t like her?
CALLER: They think that she’s duplicitous. They think she’s either an opportunist who stayed with Bill simply to acquire power, or the decisive sense of entitlement that she simply deserves it. I mean, the interview that you had earlier with Katie Couric, where it hadn’t even occurred to her that she won’t be the nominee. That whole sense of entitlement, the total lack of humor, total lack of humanity, and just the sense that she’s power hungry.
RUSH: That’s the whole point: Goddesses don’t laugh.
CALLER: Okay, but if you can’t laugh at yourself, eventually someone’s going to laugh you into extinction. I think Obama might do it. He’s learning how to mock her.
RUSH: Well, Obama has his own problems. Well, not really ‘problems,’ but the Washington Post has a blog called Fact Checker, and the headline today is: ‘Obama Tells a Whopper,’ and they quote him saying the following two things. ‘We have a president who chortled about the fact that he has not left the country before he was president,’ and, ‘It’s very hard for us to lecture others about their economies when we have doubled the national debt during one presidential term, or during the administration of a single president.’ That’s Barack Obama in Portsmouth at a foreign policy forum in New Hampshire yesterday. Is it true that George Bush had limited foreign travel experience prior to becoming president? Well, it’s a myth. Here are the facts. These are the places George Bush traveled internationally before he was president. He went to China in the seventies when his dad was the US representative in Beijing. He’s been to Japan. He’s been to Mexico, been to Spain, been to the United Kingdom, been to Ireland and been to Israel. Those are just the names ‘off the top of my head’ that longtime press aide Gordon D. Johndroe provided to the Washington Post blog in answer to the question. The business about doubling the national debt is not true, either. Now, this is just a blog. It’s just a Washington Post blog. It won’t appear in the newspaper, but they’ve got fact-checking going on, and the headline: ‘Obama Tells a Whopper.’ You know, it’s really strange to see the Drive-Bys going after these guys. Now, they’re not going after Hillary. They are going after Bill. They’re going after Obama. They’re not really touching the Breck Girl much, because I think that he’s in a self-destruct mode. Let’s go back to the audio sound bites because we’ll get to that here in just a second. Back to one more bit from Hillary Clinton’s interview with Katie Couric. Katie Couric says, ‘It was announced today that Oprah Winfrey will be campaigning with Senator Obama in three states, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. How do you feel about that?’
HILLARY: I think it’s great. I think we should have people campaign for us who support us. I’m proud to have a lot of very distinguished Americans as well as, you know, people who, you know, just get up every day and work hard for a living. Um, I’m proud to have my husband support me. It’s wonderful to have someone with his knowledge, and experience, and incredible ability to vouch for me, campaigning for me.
RUSH: Yeah, that’s Monday night, and he goes out and sabotages her yesterday in Iowa with this. I’m wondering what her reaction is. I wonder if she knew this was going to happen or was this part of a plan, or was he out there freelancing. Because, remember, he said it twice. We had that call from Iowa. He said it twice. Distinguished? You know she’s not happy with Obama getting Oprah on the campaign trail. ‘Oh, I think it’s great! I think we should have people campaigning for us who support us. I am proud to have a lot of very distinguished Americans as well as people who just get up every day and work hard for a living.’ Notice who’s distinguished and who’s not. I was once called a ‘distinguished American,’ by the way, by Algore in his debate with Ross Perot over NAFTA. My tenure as a ‘distinguished American’ was short-lived. It didn’t last much beyond the show. Now, the Breck Girl decided that he had to respond to the interview that Hillary did on Katie Couric so he went on the Nightly News with Brian Williams who said, ‘Senator Clinton yesterday told an interviewer she was certain that she’d be the nominee, absolutely certain of her own success. What do you have to blunt that assertion by the Senator?’
EDWARDS: (fake laughing) If she’s certain, she’s living in a fantasy world. Ahhh, I’ve been through this before, in 2004. Uhhh, Governor Dean looked like he had an absolute lock on the nomination, and he didn’t win a single primary (sic) or a single caucus. Uh, at this same stage he looked like a lock in 2003. Uhhh, I would say, ‘Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.’
RUSH: There’s the Breck Girl: ‘Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,’ disputing Hillary Clinton’s claim of inevitability.