RUSH: So I get this note from Cookie who does the sound bite roster. “Dear Rush: There’s something going on out there. They’re starting to put it all on you again. There’s a piece at the Daily Caller, a two-page piece on how you will decide the primary. The lede of the Daily Caller piece: ‘Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee unless Rush Limbaugh decides he shouldn’t be.'” So I said, “Cookie, they just sent you that hoping I mention it so they get some hits on their website,” which of course they’ve succeeded in doing here. But Cookie is practicing suck-upism like Snerdley does. “The Limbaugh Moment,” Daily Caller,
“Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee unless Limbaugh decides he shouldn’t be.” That’s at The Daily Caller.
So we have some sound bites. This is MSNBC this afternoon with Alex Wagner. She spoke with Salon.com news editor Steve Kornacki about the Republican primary, and during a discussion about the Hawkeye Cauci and Michele Bachmann’s decision to drop out, Alex Wagner, PMSNBC, said to Steve Kornacki, “Speaking of people who don’t know when to leave, Rick Perry is still in the race.”
KORNACKI: It was a dream night for Rick Santorum because he got the opportunity to be the conservative who’s gonna go toe to toe with Romney, and then it turned into a nightmare the next day ’cause the other guys wouldn’t get out of the way. You know, he needed not just — he needed Perry out, he probably needed Gingrich out, and he needed guys like Rush Limbaugh to be like, “Listen, this is the moment, if we’re ever gonna stop Mitt, it’s now.” Instead Limbaugh’s on his radio show Wednesday saying, “You know, this is gonna be fun to watch. It’s kind of a train wreck.”
RUSH: So this Kornacki guy at Salon is saying I’m to blame. Over The Daily Caller they’re saying it’s gonna be up to me who the nominee is, and this Salon guy says I blew it after Santorum winning by not telling the other guys to get the hell out of the race.
RUSH: So let’s continue here with the sound bites. This is Dana Perino, we played this. Yeah, but I want to redo this. This was yesterday, right before this program began, Dana Perino was on Fox News talking to Jenna Lee about Huntsman.
PERINO: One of the things that happened in one of the debates, I thought it was just a slip-up, when Governor Huntsman said America is screwed? Okay, that is not presidential language, but on live TV you can sometimes say something you wish you didn’t say. But today in New Hampshire releasing an ad that actually says that, and I think that just strikes the wrong note with people. If you want to be the leader of the United States of America, you should act like it.
RUSH: That was Dana Perino, who we like here at the EIB, very upset with Huntsman for actually saying the US is screwed, you shouldn’t do that if you’re running for president. Do you agree with that, Dawn? Okay. So I mentioned that Dana had said this and so forth. Then on her show, Dana Perino’s show on the Fox News Channel, they had this little exchange.
PERINO: So I brought this up on Happening Now, and I said that I didn’t think it sounded presidential, and our good friend who we really like, Rush Limbaugh, said he liked me but disagreed with me because he thought that that’s just bold and that’s true. And I do think that if Rush Limbaugh said it, I’d be for it, but I’m old-fashioned. I didn’t think it was presidential enough, but I love it that Rush was watching.
RUSH: Right, so still don’t like the idea that Huntsman was out there using the words “country screwed,” it’s just not presidential. But, you know, Dana Perino being a woman is probably a little bit more sensitive about language than I am as a man, according to the survey results we just got. Well, we talked about it earlier. Men are more dominant and women are more sensitive about things like this. I think what I’ll do, I’m gonna send — is he Ambassador Huntsman or Governor Huntsman, what’s he go by? ‘Cause he’s been both. I’ll send a note to Governor Huntsman, “Look, next time — for when they cover you on Fox — when you do this ad just say the country has been intercoursed. And that way nobody will have a problem with it.”
We move on, we’re not through here. This is John Sununu last night, Fox Business News network, Freedom Watch. The host was Judge Andrew Napolitano talking with former chief of staff to George H. W. Bush. John Sununu from New Hampshire, Napolitano said, “How do you feel about comments from conservatives as well as the establishment like Rush Limbaugh, George Will, that Mitt Romney is not one of them, meaning Mitt is really not a conservative?”
SUNUNU: Well, I feel about it, I’d put on the other side of that Dan Quayle, vice president of the United States, solid, staunch, first-class conservative. I’d put myself there, solid, staunch, first-class conservative. Governor of South Carolina, Tea Party favorite, solid, staunch, first-class conservative. And we can go on all night long, people like that supporting Governor Romney.
RUSH: So Sununu, “What do you mean that Romney doesn’t have the support of conservatives? You got me, you got Quayle, you got Nikki Haley, got all kinds of staunch conservatives out there. This is my point. (interruption) That’s right. So what, it doesn’t prove anything. (interruption) Since when did Sununu become a staunch conservative? (laughing) Well, you’re just thinking David Souter. Okay. We move on. Judge Andrew Napolitano after talking to the staunch conservative John Sununu, then had another staunch conservative on as his guest and that would be the Huckster, the former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. And so Napolitano says, “Is Romney the conservative that you are, that Rush Limbaugh is, that Ronald Reagan was?”
HUCKABEE: Well, you know, it’s interesting that Rush Limbaugh is attacking Romney ’cause four years ago he couldn’t get enough of him and he loved him some Romney. And I don’t understand what has happened with Rush’s feelings ’cause Romney is the same today that he was four years ago. If anything he might have kind of matured and become more conservative, at least more set in his own convictions better than he was four years ago. But Rush Limbaugh has been attacking him.
RUSH: What is so hard for these guys to understand about this? You know, every election cycle is different, has different people in it. Of the available choices back in 2008, yeah, we “loved us some Romney,” as the former governor of Arkansas says. (laughing) It really wasn’t hard, either. When you have McCain in the race, anybody is going to… but McCain’s not in the roster this time around. That help?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One more observation: Four years ago I think it’s safe to say that Mitt Romney was the most conservative candidate in the race by the time Fred Thompson dropped out. Giuliani, some people wouldn’t say he was the most conservative, but he’s a strict law-and-order guy. But between Romney and McCain, when you talk about conservatism, it wasn’t even a tough choice back in 2008. By the way, I ought to throw that back at people. You people that are asking me where the hell I am now versus where in 2008? You’re the guys that were trying to sandbag Romney in 2008! Now all of a sudden you’re in his camp? All of you people were trying to take Romney out, you’re teaming up with McCain to kill Romney; now all of a sudden you’re in his camp? What the hell’s changed with you? That’s the real question, if you ask me.