RUSH: Tina Brown of The Daily Beast website, last Thursday — on New Year’s Eve — on the Today Show. The fill-in cohost, the Street Sweetie, Erin Burnett spoke with Tina Brown about events during the year 2009. And the Street Sweetie, Erin Burnett said, ‘What do you think was the most important moment of 2009?’
BROWN: It’s gotta be that incredible inauguration of Obama.
BURNETT: Mmm.
BROWN: Because, you know, you started the year with this huge festival of hope and renewal and everything is going to be so different now, and then like the bad fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, Rush Limbaugh utters the words, ‘I hope he fails.’
BURNETT: Mmm-hmm.
BROWN: At that moment sort of like the Pandora’s Box opened and the rest of the year has been just this big discord and toxic atmosphere in politics and partisan divide and people shouting at each other and the tea parties and death panels and all of the stuff —
BURNETT: Mmm-hmm.
BROWN: — that took us into the year where now — where we just got the health care bill probably about to be passed with no Republican votes at all.
RUSH: That’s actually delusional. That’s wandering aimlessly in hope of a thought and not finding one. Blaming me and ‘I hope he fails’ for the partisanship? We were in a huge festival of hope and renewal? What was this, an amusement park we were at last January? A festival of hope and renewal? And everything is going to be so different now? The truth, Ms. Brown, is that you’ve got a classic — never, ever anything different than any socialist Democrat has ever been — in Barack Obama. There’s not one thing unique about him. The quirk of fate is how fast he’s been able get his agenda done because of so many unelected Democrats in the Senate. That’s the real story here. ”I hope he fails,’ and from that moment the Pandora’s Box opened and the rest of the year has been this big discord.’ As though if I hadn’t said that, why, we would all have free love and free sex! We’d be in communes together and be smoking pipes and having a grand old time. But I had to go out and ruin it by saying I hope Obama fails. I still hope it! The problem is, he succeeds when the country fails. That’s the whole point.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. So Tina Brown is out there saying Obama ran into trouble because I said I hope he fails. It’s my fault. Tina, I know you’re going to hear about this, so let me just remind you of something. Long before I said I hope he failed, it was Obama who cut off all debate on his stimulus package by saying, ‘I won.’ He brings the Republicans up and says, ‘I’ll listen to any idea anybody has.’ And the Republicans said, ‘Tax cuts.’ Nope, nope, ‘I won.’ We’re going to do it my way. And, by the way, Tina he also at that same meeting told people not to listen to me. So there’s Mr. Festival of hope, Mr. Festival of renewal.