RUSH: I was minding my own business, as I usually do late in the afternoon. I wasn’t bothering anybody. Punkin had just gotten back from the cat hospital, and she nuzzling me, kicking me, eating me, whining at me and trying to get fed. (interruption)
Oh, she just went for a checkup. Punkin’s 11 now, so she just went in for a checkup. She’s had some bladder infections recently so she just went in for a checkup. So Punkin came home and came immediately to the library and started meowing and getting in my face, head-butting me and so forth while I’m minding by own business. I said, “What is this about? Maybe she hasn’t eaten.” So just as I was preparing to hoist myself out of my luxurious sofa to go upstairs to feed Punkin, an e-mail signal rang on the iPhone. I looked at it, and it was the news that Olympia Snowe is retiring. (laughing)
It was breaking news! It was, “Stopping everything! Olympia Snowe is quitting!” (laughing) And I said, “Okay, I’m gonna guess what I’m gonna read here before I read it.” So I said, “She’s tired of the partisanship. She’s in good health; everything is hunky-dory. She just doesn’t like the partisanship in the Senate.” And by golly, by gosh, there it was when I read the story!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The only thing I was gonna say about Olympia Snowe is, in this USA Today story there’s major concern here that we may now lose the Senate because of this. Republicans might lose the Senate because of this. Excuse me. I thought that’s what Romney was gonna do, was make sure that we didn’t lose the Senate even if he lost. I did hear that? I know that I heard that. But if one Republican retires we might lose the Senate? First I’ve heard of that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know what’s laughable about the Republicans panicking over the fact that Olympia Snowe retiring means that we might lose the Senate? As far as I’m concerned, with her in it, we never had it! That’s been the problem. With Olympia Snowe in the Senate as a Republican, we’ve never had the Senate as Republicans. She didn’t vote with Republicans; she didn’t vote with conservatives. This is no great loss. It’s no different than a Democrat retiring. This is the illusion the Republican Party is in. They think they lost a Republican. They didn’t! We never had the Senate as long as she was in it. And Susan Collins, too, and a number of others. Voinovich half the time. You know the usual suspects.