RUSH: There’s an ad that does not exist. Are you aware of this? Romney’s got this super PAC, and this guy runs the super PAC, and the guy running the super PAC said he was gonna produce an ad that was gonna be critical of Obama, was gonna talk about Jeremiah Wright. The ad doesn’t exist. Romney went out and said don’t run it, I don’t want to be a part of this. He asked the super PAC, which I thought you couldn’t do, not to run it or he disavowed it. The ad has not run. But listen to this, sound bite four. We have a montage of journalists in a frenzy over the Reverend Wright ad that does not exist. By the way, the first voice, Snerdley’s hottie, Suzanne Malveaux. She barely kept her dress on at the White House Correspondents Dinner cause Obama was in the room.
MALVEAUX: He is a billionaire. He puts forward this ad. They’re going to use Jeremiah Wright.
WILLIAMS: An expensive anti-Obama ad campaign that would have put the issue of race front and center.
DOBBS: A Republican super PAC attack ad featuring the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
SMITH: Campaign commercials that feature President Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
SUAREZ: A multimillion dollar ad campaign attaching President Obama to his old pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
MORGAN: Pretending to be a metrosexual black Abe Lincoln. (laughing) That is really offensive, isn’t it?
ANDERSEN: We’ve had a history of vile politicking, but it’s gotten to an extreme.
RUSH: The ad doesn’t exist, folks. The ad has not been made.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to the audio sound bites. We are up to number five. Gonna go in order. I want to take you back to January 30th on this show. Now, this is about the ad that doesn’t exist. This is about the Romney super PAC ad that was going to focus on Obama’s ties with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, super PAC was gonna launch into that. Well, what happened was that somebody leaked the plans for the ad to the New York Times, and that was it. The New York Times reveals the details and all heck breaks loose. Everybody’s up in arms. The media starts excoriating Romney and his campaign for an ad that doesn’t exist yet, talking about how they’re just nothing but a bunch of racists in the Republican Party.
Clearly what’s happened here is that somebody in the Romney campaign found out about this, it’s obvious Romney doesn’t want to go there, just like McCain didn’t want to go there, they can’t really tell legally the super PAC what to do, what not to do. So somebody in-the-know leaks the plan to the New York Times. I’m fully convinced, unless somebody can convince me otherwise, that this was done to protect Romney. Somebody’s standpoint thinks it would be very bad politically for Romney to go after Wright, tie Obama to him. So they’re trying to save Romney here. I, El Rushbo, not surprised. Do you remember during the primary when Romney and the super PAC that he had, even himself, just ripping Newt and Rick Perry and everybody else to shreds, negative ad after negative ad after negative ad. And during that period, people said, “Gee, I hope Romney’s prepared to do this to Obama and not just Republicans.” So back on January 30th on this program, your host said…
RUSH ARCHIVE: Whoever the nominee is, if he chooses to, can lay off Obama — which will happen, by the way. I am sure of it. Particularly Romney. I don’t think there is any way… Romney’s already said, “He’s just in over his head. Well, you know, he’s a nice guy. Misguided. The Republican consultants that are in play here are not going to permit their candidate to go after Obama. They think they’re gonna be losing independents. And if I didn’t know better, I would say that the consultants will also try to rein in the super PACs, too. … I hope I’m wrong. I want to be wrong. I’ll be stunned, though, if we see from Romney (if he’s the nominee) this kind of stuff against Obama that we’re seeing against Newt. If we’d had a super PAC in 2008 vetting Obama, that was running television ads on Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright and all these things? “Where are Obama’s friends? Who are his girlfriends? Where are the students of his that were inspired?” All of that was in television ads, media ads? Who knows what 2008 would have been.
RUSH: Right. But McCain didn’t want to go there. My prediction was back on January 30th that Romney would not treat the Democrat like his super PAC had been treating Republicans. And, lo and behold, here’s Mitt Romney yesterday in Jacksonville, Florida, talking about this proposed ad, linking Obama to Jeremiah Wright.
ROMNEY: I repudiate that effort. I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign. I’ve been disappointed in the president’s campaign to date, which is focused on character assassination. I just think that we’re wiser to talk about the issues of the day, what we do to get America working again, talk about our respective records. The centerpiece of his campaign is quite clearly character assassination and the centerpiece of my campaign is gonna be my vision to get America working again and provide a brighter future for our kids.
RUSH: So he understands the centerpiece of Obama is going to be character assassination, but he’s not gonna go there. And I’ll tell you why. It’s the consultants. And Romney may be of this opinion himself. Although if being critical of your opponent’s gonna drive the independents away, he sure wasn’t afraid of that when his opponents were Republicans. When his opponents were Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry and Rick Santorum, he didn’t care what the independents did. Now, all of a sudden, it’s always about the independents with the Republican establishment, with the DC Beltway Republican clique, can’t scare off the independents, oh, no, they’re gonna call us racists.
By the way, is this not in fact Romney trying to influence what the super PAC does? He said it’s the wrong course for a PAC. I don’t think PACs should be doing that? Back in January, Romney couldn’t tell the super PAC’s what to do, Newt and everybody, (imitating Romney) “You call off the dogs. Hey, I can’t tell the super PACs what to do, Newt, you know, it’s against the law. It’s election law. I can’t tell super PACs what to do.” Here he’s telling the super PACs what he thinks. He continued. He had more to say.
ROMNEY: My effort at Bain Capital, as you know, was in every case designed to try and make the enterprises we invested in more successful, to grow them. The purpose of the president’s ads are not to describe success and failure but to somehow to suggest that I’m not a good person or not a good guy, and I think the American people will know better than that, if they don’t already. Having the campaign focused on character assassination is one of the things I find offensive among many others in the PAC description that came in the New York Times. If that’s accurate, why, obviously that’s something I’d repudiate.
RUSH: So he’s repudiating what his super PAC was going to do based on what the New York Times said. He’ll let Obama run a character assassination campaign, but he’s not going to do it. No big deal. I remember I took a lot of heat, but I tried to warn people that the presidential campaign was not gonna look a whole lot of like — now, having said that, Romney does have a rapid response team that does get in gear responding to what Obama says. You gotta give him credit for that, but they’re not gonna go after Obama this way. They’ve made that very clear.