RUSH: Belews Creek, North Carolina. Hi, Michael. We go back to the safe confines of telephone. Great to have you, sir.
CALLER: Watchin’ from God’s country, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: I’m a 20-year listener, and I have a little bit of a different take. There is no way [Obama’s] handlers, Axelrod or any of the others, are gonna allow him to back a losing horse. If he were to come out and backed — and said that he was not in support of — that constitutional amendment beforehand, because it won overwhelming —
RUSH: Well, look: Practically, yeah. It’s a good point. It’d be a mistake the day before. But where was he before? This has been on the ballot for a while. It’s been a campaign issue. Where was Obama leading on this? This is my point to all these people opening up their checkbooks to the guy: Where was he leading on this? He sits on the sidelines. He lets this thing in North Carolina, from his standpoint, go down to defeat. Where was the leadership? Where was he campaigning? The Democrat convention is in your state. Why is he silent? He’s been in there a lot doing economic speeches. Why doesn’t he try to gin up support for this?
CALLER: Well, because he knows he’s gonna lose. He knows. Although they say North Carolina’s a swing state, he knows he’s gonna lose North Carolina, too.
RUSH: Well, wait a minute. He is The One! He’s the guy that’s supposed to change people’s minds. He’s the leader. He’s supposed to take the country into the Twenty-First Century.
CALLER: Yeah, it’s come down to a select few in Research Triangle Park, according to some of the pundits that are looking at it.
RUSH: Yeah, I am aware. Yeah, I’m aware of that.
CALLER: If you talk with the people in Research Triangle Park, I mean he loses. He’s a loser. It’s not gonna happen.
RUSH: Wait, what isn’t gonna happen?
CALLER: There’s no way in the world he’s gonna get reelected.
RUSH: “No way…” Oh. Oh. Dick Morris is of the same mind. Dick Morris thinks that Obama could lose big, like landslide big.
CALLER: Yeah! Of course!
RUSH: Of course?
CALLER: There’s no way he carries North Carolina. He may carry Charlotte. He may carry Raleigh. He may carry Greensboro. But those aren’t North Carolinians. Those are “halfbacks.” Those are the folks that came from New York, went to Florida, and moved here on the way back.
RUSH: Well, yeah, I know. The blue parts of the state, the college towns. If he loses North Carolina, that’s big.
CALLER: (silence)
RUSH: I didn’t hear that, so let me ask again. Michael, are you still there?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: You’re a native North Carolinian?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Did you use…? Let me ask: What term did you use to describe New Yorkers and other Northeasterners who have migrated to North Carolina?
RUSH: Halfbacks?
CALLER: Yes. New Yorkers that moved to Florida, they moved halfway back to New York, and they settled in North Carolina.
RUSH: Oh! Oh, I got. They went to Florida first. Why didn’t they stay there?
CALLER: Too hot.
RUSH: Too hot. So back to North Carolina. Halfbacks. Okay. We were worried here for a second.
CALLER: (laughing) Again, there’s no way [Obama] wins in North Carolina. Ain’t gonna happen.
RUSH: By the way, by the way… Michael, thanks for the call. He has it exactly right. When I first got to Florida in 1997, I was kinda shocked to realize that Floridians go someplace for the summer. Well, “Floridians.” I know that Florida has got a lot of New Yorkers that go back to the Hamptons or to Michigan or wherever, but they go to North Carolina. They go to the mountains of North Carolina where it’s cooler. They’ve built golf courses up in the mountains of North Carolina, and that’s where they go.
I would have thought that North Carolina would be much more insufferably hot in the summertime than Florida, particularly on the beaches, anyway. But they go to the mountains. So I didn’t know the name was “halfback.” That means they’re halfway home. “Okay, we got ’em out of Florida. Now we’re waiting for ’em to just make the move and get all the way back to New York.” Halfbacks. That’s why, in addition to being college towns, the cities in North Carolina are blue and vote Democrat.
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