RUSH: My question to you, after all of this, somebody tell me: What has changed from November of 2010 regarding the Tea Party? What’s changed? Chuck Schumer running around, (imitating Schumer) “We beat ’em back. Hell, we can’t even find ’em, they don’t show up anywhere anymore. Tea Party? They’re not professionals, they’re just average citizens. They don’t even like government. They don’t like politics.” They were fed up for a while, but as far as the Democrats are convinced you Tea Party are out of energy, you’ve had your say, you’re watching the Republican nomination, you’re not being listened to, your candidates aren’t going anywhere, you say, “Ah, screw it,” and you fold it.
The New York Times has a big story about the Republican establishment trying to marginalize the Tea Party. So the Washington establishment is convinced the Tea Party’s gone. My question is, “What has changed since November of 2010 with the Tea Party?” Now, I understand the power of the media to paint a picture, to create an image. And they’re doing it, and this is what this is all about. In fact, the Tea Party never really was real. That’s where this is headed, the Tea Party was an aberration. It was one of those odd things that happens in politics now and then. You listen to Tea Party people, they’re not even as energetic as they were. There’s a school board election (I can tell you this) in Wake County, North Carolina, where every Tea Party candidate got shellacked; and the Democrat strategy in the campaign was to paint them all as racists.
So the theory is that the way you beat Tea Party candidates is to call ’em racists, this from Public Policy Polling. They analyze these elections, which are the essence of local election, school board. But nevertheless, the theory is that you can beat a Tea Party candidate by calling ’em racists; that it’s been done in North Carolina and that’s the end of it.
So that would be one thing that you might say has changed but aside from that, somebody tell me: What really has changed from November 2010? If the 2010 November elections were today, would the results be any different than they were then? That’s what they’re trying to tell us. Chuck Schumer and the Republican establishment are trying to tell us that if the November 2010 elections were held today, that there wouldn’t have been that landslide Republican win. It wouldn’ta happened. So the Tea Party is waning when Michele Bachmann has won the only actual vote taken so far, the Iowa straw poll. Well, Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll, and Herman Cain is leading in most opinion polls — and Herman Cain’s Tea Party.
Seventy percent of Republican voters say they don’t like Romney, one aspect or another of Romney. There’s the establishment. The Tea Party’s faded away, but somehow their candidates are in serious contention in the polls. These racist Tea Partiers who have put Herman Cain at the top in the most recent poll. Herman Cain (you may not know this) is African-American, and he’s at the top of the polling data. And the Tea Party put him there. But the Tea Party doesn’t exist, they’re racists and they’re fading away.
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RUSH: Brian in Atlanta, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing?
RUSH: I’m okay, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Well, you said that the Tea Party is shrinking, and I’m a Tea Party leader here in Atlanta, and I can tell you that is absolutely false.
RUSH: No, I didn’t say it. What I am saying is that the Republican establishment and the Democrat Party are joined together with the media in trying to create the impression that the Tea Party’s dead.
CALLER: Yeah, wishful thinking.
RUSH: It’s still a bunch of racists, but it’s dead. That’s what they’re trying to do. And that’s been replaced, by the way, in popular culture energy with the Occupy Wall Street crowd. “Tea Party’s gone, this is the real protest movement now, the Wall Street crowd.” That’s the impression they’re trying to create each and every day in the media, and it’s all being done to dispirit people like you.
CALLER: Well, it’s not working.
RUSH: Well, good.
CALLER: You know, people are very jazzed. I mean we just showed the movie Agenda and we almost had to turn people away, and people were fired up. We were just at an air show, and our booth was constantly busy, people were just telling us keep going, they wanted to know when the next meeting was, we have people signing up left and right. It’s starting to swell again for the 2012 elections.
RUSH: Well, you and I know this. I think it’s only growing and the passion is only swelling and that’s why the ongoing effort here to diminish it. If the Tea Party had really faded away, they’d be ignoring it, they wouldn’t be reporting it, and they wouldn’t have started this Occupy Wall Street. The whole reason for the creation of the Occupy Wall Street protests is to counter the impact of the Tea Party. It’s all part of a grand design. Stakes are high. The establishment in Washington, both parties, ruling class, the elites, whatever you want to call ’em, they realize that they face a real threat. That’s why on our side they’re trying to secure the nomination for Romney early, get these primaries moved up on the calendar. They all feel threatened by this.
And what’s really odd about it, the Republican establishment, if it were worth anything, would be looking at the glaring weaknesses of Obama and trying to capitalize on ’em. And that’s not what they’re doing. Stop and think about that. The Republican establishment, I can’t find any evidence they’re trying to capitalize on this weakness. The Republican establishment seems to be focused primarily on marginalizing the Tea Party and Tea Party freshmen in Congress. Now, the Occupy Wall Street crowd, they’re down there, they’re demanding more taxes, they’re demanding more freebies, they’re demanding more successful people be thrown in jail. The Tea Party wants less taxes and smaller government, who do you think represents real America? The establishment types know it. Nothing is changed since November 2010.
Since November 2010 the majority of Americans had not all of a sudden said, “You know what, we kind of like what Obama is doing. We like houses being bulldozed in Michigan and now Ohio. We like unemployment 9.2% and getting worse. We like the fact that we can’t get jobs and nobody is getting raises and we like the fact our tax rates are gonna go up and we like the fact that this health care bill that nobody wanted is gonna be implemented.” Yep, yep, everybody, we can see that change. It’s all over the country, right? That’s what they want us to believe.
That’s what they want, and if they can’t make you believe that, they want you to believe that the effort to stop this is pointless, that you’re not big enough or strong enough nor large enough to stop it, and that you don’t have a candidate that can stop it anyway. They just want you to give up. They want you to pack it in. They want you to surrender. They want you to think of yourselves as totally ineffective, meaningless, and worthless, that you can’t stop ’em anyway so you may as well stop even caring. That’s what they’re after.
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RUSH: You know, I just asked a question, the Occupy Wall Street protestors demanding more taxes and bigger government; the Tea Party wants less — who do you think represents real America? Well, continuing with the theme of the day, I am holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers (shuffling paper) a TIME Magazine poll: “Occupy Wall Street Is More Popular Than The Tea Party — A TIME poll taken on October 9 and 10, with a base of 1,001 people, has turned up some interesting results about how Americans view the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and dysfunction in Washington.” Now, get this: “81% of respondents think the country is on the wrong track, but they’re reluctant to place the blame fully on President Obama for the problems; 50% of the respondents disapprove of the way he’s handling the job, but 59% believe that he cares about them…”
What the hell does that have to do with anything? But they ask it so they can report it. “[H]alf of the respondents say he has the toughness necessary to see this through. On an exceedingly grim note, only 4% of the 1,001 polled feel positive about the state of the country today. The poll asked people to identify which faction of government best represents their views. 30% identified with Democrats, while 17% said Republicans and 12% went with the Tea Party.” So you end up with 29%. So they admit that their sample is skewed. So if you’re looking for a left-right bias it leans slightly to the left assuming that designations of Democrats to the left and Tea Party is to the right.
But if you dig even deeper into the numbers, the Tea Party was more hated than Organize Wall Street. Tea Party had 24% very unfavorable, Organize Wall Street only 13% very unfavorable, while Organize Wall Street was more readily embraced, 25% very favorable against the Tea Party’s 8% very favorable. There you have it. So, according to TIME Magazine, the Tea Party is hated, disliked; 80% think the country’s going in the wrong direction, 59% think Obama is about ’em. And the Tea Party is hated much more than Organize Wall Street. So it’s an-all-out effort now, it is an all-out push.
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RUSH: Mark in Houston. I’m glad you called, sir, you’re up next the EIB Network.
CALLER: Yes. Thank you, Rush. “Commandeer” is the appropriate term, and the Tea Party can commandeer the GOP, especially if you could pronounce the last name of the chairman “Palin,” but that’s not why I called. I believe the Tea Party is very silent because we’re just listening. We’re listening. We got a little bit bamboozled by some of these RINOs in the last election, but what we don’t want to get hit by is some TINOs in this election.
RUSH: So what are you gonna do?
CALLER: We’re gonna listen. We’re gonna listen and see who the guys up there that are talking Tea Party, and the guys that are up there who are acting Tea Party. So far, the best guy acting Tea Party is Herman Cain.
RUSH: Well, he’s leading in the polls right now. Newt Gingrich has moved into third place, by the way, in the poll that has Herman Cain at the top of the heap. By the way, Herman Cain is going to appear on Meet the Press Sunday, it was just announced.
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