RUSH: This is yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio. Mitt Romney held a town hall event. The Q&A had this exchange with a woman about repealing Obamacare.

WOMAN: I need an emphatic “yes” from you that you will repeal Obamacare.

ROMNEY: Why would — why would I not —

WOMAN: I need —

ROMNEY: — all right?

CALLER: I need —

ROMNEY: There’s no — there’s no — Early on we were asked, “Is what you’ve done in Massachusetts something you’d have the entire government do, the federal government do?” I said, “No,” from the very beginning, no. This is designed for our state and our circumstance.

RUSH: So there apparently was some question yesterday in Youngstown over whether or not Romney does intend to repeal Obamacare, and it came up because of the 2009 op-ed in USA Today where it was interpreted from what Romney wrote that he believed in the federal mandate. Last night on Your World With Neil Cavuto, Fox News Channel, Neil Cavuto’s show, four o’clock, had former Massachusetts first lady Ann Romney as his guest. He said, “Newt Gingrich is piling on, saying your husband, maybe even you by extension, the Romney family in general is oblivious to high gasoline prices and the cost of living in general given your wealth compared to every day concerns of average Americans.”

ANN ROMNEY: I don’t even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing. It can be here today and gone tomorrow. And how I measure riches is by the friends I have and the loved ones I have and the people that I care about in my life, and that’s where my values are and those are my riches. So for me having gone through a difficult period in my life, both with MS and with breast cancer, it has done something to my heart and it’s softened my heart and it’s made me realize that there are many people suffering in this country, and they’re suffering from things that aren’t financial, and there are some people that are suffering from things that are financial as well. But those that are suffering, for me, I just have a larger capacity for love and for understanding.

RUSH: Okay. Earlier today, MSNBC did a whole panel discussion on her answer, “I don’t even consider myself wealthy, because it can be all gone tomorrow.” Can be gone tomorrow. So she doesn’t think of herself that way. I would tell you, I believe her. I don’t think that she made any of this up. Well, I’ll tell you, what’s hard to understand about the remark is that people who are not wealthy, whatever wealth is to them — and, by the way, that’s an interesting fun game to play. The next time you’re with a group of people, ask your friends as you’re sitting around talking, what is wealth to you, how much is rich? You will be amazed at the answers you get.

But my guess, Mr. Snerdley, is that people who don’t consider themselves wealthy, who imagine themselves having the kind of money that it’s assumed the Romneys have, what is Romney’s net worth supposed to be, a hundred million dollars or something? Let’s say it is, let’s say a hundred million dollars. People cannot imagine ever losing that. They can’t imagine ever spending it all. They can’t imagine a hundred million dollars vanishing. They just can’t. And so when Ann Romney comes along and says, “I don’t consider myself wealthy, it’s an interesting thing, it can be here today and gone tomorrow,” what she’s doing is sharing a fact of life, maybe even a fear that a lot of wealthy people have, that it will be gone tomorrow. I can’t tell you the number of people that think Obama is gonna take it from ’em or the Democrat Party in general, or there’s gonna be some policy somewhere down the road based on the way we’re going that there’s going to be a limit on how much anybody can have.

Now, that’s gonna be very hard, ’cause there’s so damn many rich Democrats that they’re not gonna sit around having their money taken. It would be hard to exempt them. But it’s a natural fear for people who’ve earned it, because people who’ve earned it probably lost a whole lot in the process. People who’ve earned it probably didn’t have a lot to begin with. They know how hard it was to get it, and if it is ever gone, the process of rebuilding, it’s an arduous thing to imagine. (interruption) Well, do you think a lot of people think you could get sick and lose a hundred million dollars ’cause you get sick? Okay. Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay, well, yes, her focus on what real riches are. And I’ve always said, when you look back on your life, stuff that really matters to you, the stuff that really makes your fondest memories is the relationships you have with people you love.

It’s not what you acquired. It’s not what you had. It’s not what you ended up being able to buy. That’s not what people cite when they get old and they start talking and reflecting on their lives, the things they remember. I thought it was, too. I thought it was a very human thing, too. I thought it stood out in its, quote, unquote, humanity. Romney’s net worth is $202 million. But they obviously, at least Ann Romney doesn’t live as though she’s got that every day. And the truth is she doesn’t. It’s probably invested away, squirreled away, you just can’t go grab it. Anyway, the left is trying to make a big deal out of that, saying she’s heartless and has no ability to relate to people, doesn’t think of herself as wealthy. How can that be? Trying to drum that up.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Did you hear what Barbara Bush said? She said it’s the worst campaign ever. She was in Dallas yesterday at SMU during a forum entitled America’s First Ladies: The Republican War on Women. (No, I’m making that up.) America’s First Ladies: An Enduring Vision. Barbara Bush said this about this campaign…

BARBARA BUSH: It’s been, I think, the worst campaign I’ve ever seen in my life. I just hate it. I hate the fact that people think “compromise” is a dirty word.

RUSH: That’s why the campaign is the worst she’s ever seen. “I hate the fact that people think ‘compromise’ is a dirty word.” Now, Mrs. Bush comes from a more genteel time when the Republicans were thought of very highly when they compromised, such as, well: “Read my lips: No new taxes,” and then compromise on it. Such as instances like that when we had 135 members of the House, and the Democrats ran the show for 40 years. That’s when it was pretty smooth. There wasn’t a whole lot of acrimony going on then. The worst that happened was the Republicans were laughed at and made fun of every day.

But they weren’t called vicious names like hatemongers and mean-spirited, extremist, racist, bigot homophobes. And so it was a genteel time. Now Mrs. Bush probably does not see the future the same way we do, in the sense that we think the country is on the brink. I actually think, folks, we’re losing the country. There’s always gonna be an America. There’s always gonna be the Continental 48 and Alaska and Hawaii. There’s always gonna be a United States of America. But I think we’re losing the country as found. We’re losing our moral core. We are losing the foundation, the strengths that are required that made this the greatest country ever.

We’re losing the things that distinguished us from everybody else, and the primary thing that we’re losing is freedom. Because it is freedom, an unparalleled amount of freedom, we have. Human beings in this country know and knew freedom like human beings in the rest of the world never even dreamed of. Well, they did dream of it. I take it back, they did ream of it — and they all tried to come here. And that’s what American exceptionalism is. We’re an exception to the standard living conditions of the vast majority of humanity. Most human beings live in tyranny. They live lives of — if not squalor — certainly not prosperity, with no opportunity for it. Many people lived in fear constantly of the authorities around them. They lived in jails, dungeons. They feared being overheard.

That was the standard for human life: Tyranny, despotism, dictatorship.

That’s the way most people lived, and the United States of America came along and all of that changed. And it all changed because of our Constitution and our founding documents like the Declaration of Independence — all of them put together — acknowledged freedom comes from God. Liberty, rights, all come from God. Our Constitution was written to limit what government can do. Our rights were established on the basis of what government could not do to us. The Obama regime and the Democrat Party (as constituted today) wants “rights” to be redefined as what government decides it might or might not do for you. Obama and the American left, the worldwide left, want “rights” to result from dictatorship. They want “rights” to be defined by government, not by our natural existence as created by God.

That’s what we’re losing — and in so doing, we’re losing the country.

Far more Americans than you would believe feel and think the same way.