RUSH: Here’s Jerry in Pensacola, Florida. I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. I appreciate you taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: You know, it’s no secret. You’ve mentioned this time and time again and most people who pay any attention realize it. If they remember that GM and the way they were treated, it’s the same thing that Bain Capital does all the time. That fact is no secret. You’ve mentioned it before. But what puzzles me is why the —
RUSH: Okay, wait. What happened? Explain what you mean.
CALLER: Well, they had to shut down all the dealers. They had to make GM smaller to save jobs, supposedly. To save the company.
RUSH: That’s right!
CALLER: So a lot of people went out the door.
RUSH: And what did they have to do? They were trying to become profitable.
CALLER: That’s exactly right. But what puzzles me… I mean, that’s common sense to you and most folks, but what puzzles me is why the PR people for Romney’s campaign aren’t banging away at that every day. They ought to have some of those car dealers doing some of their political ads. They ought to have some of the stockholders who had to take a bath on the stock to counteract some of this other stuff. I thought these people were smart, but I began to scratch my head.
RUSH: Well, I think… I have no contact with the Romney campaign people or any of that. My guess is they’re sitting around letting the Democrats handle this for ’em. I mean, when you’ve got all these Democrats coming out and attacking Obama for the ad and defending Bain and private equity, it’s kind of a situation where: “Okay, just back off and let them have at it.” I think Romney’s rapid response team has actually been pretty good on some things.
CALLER: They’re pretty good at hauling out props for the Democrats for their own purposes, and I would think it would be… People would stand up and take notice if you had some of these car dealers that lost their jobs or their businesses, or some of the people who owned stock who had to take a bath.
RUSH: Forget the stockholders. How about the bondholders? They’re the ones that were forced to take a bath at General Motors. They’re the ones Obama called “greedy” because all they wanted was a return on their investment.
CALLER: Absolutely. That’s what I meant. It just puzzles me that they’re not banging away that. If I may, one more thing? I got my first order of your tea the other day.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: And I don’t have a big enough head to think you did it because of me — because I did send an e-mail earlier when you first started selling tea — but I have looked for ages in every convenience store and every grocery store I can find for plain tea.
RUSH: And you like ours. Everybody does. What can I say?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This guy called… Oops! I just knocked a bottle of Plane ‘Ol Tea on the floor trying to reach for it. The guy called and I was hoping that he would get to it quicker because time was running down. But he wanted to talk about how much he loved the Plane ‘Ol Tea. It’s kind of a crime to call it “plain” tea because it’s so good, because it’s unsweetened. I have to tell you, we started Two If By Tea with regular sweetened tea and diet, and raspberry and diet. And then we had other flavors.
And the moment that we introduced the product, we started hearing requests from people for plain, unsweetened tea. And I pooh-poohed it. I said, “Ah, if people want unsweetened tea, they can make it themselves. That takes no art, but people can’t do their own raspberry tea. They can’t do their own peach, blueberry, or what have you.” And yet the requests kept pouring in for just plain, unsweetened tea. So we finally said… Actually Kathryn finally said, “Look, we’re gonna have to do this. The demand is overwhelming,” and it was.
So we introduced the plain, unsweetened tea a month or two ago, and it is going like gangbusters. And I admit to being totally surprised. It’s like we don’t offer lemon. I mean, if you want lemon in your tea, go grab a lemon, slice it, and squeeze it in there. You don’t need me for that. But you do need me if you want great blueberry tea. You don’t need me for unsweetened tea. But it’s going gangbusters. And I have to admit, I’m a marketing pro, a marketing expert, but I missed this one.
If it hadn’t been for Kathryn insisting, I woulda said, “Nah, nah, nah,” because I viewed it as anecdotal, not scientific. We weren’t doing professional research to show what kind of demand there might be for unsweetened tea. We’re just going by instinct, and my instinct was, “Yeah, we’re hearing it from some people but it’s by no means a majority of our buying public.” It turns out that I was wrong, and this stuff is loved and adored by people.
So I wanted to thank the guy for his nice words.
He wanted to know why there’s not a rapid response by Romney to the Bain ad using General Motors. Obama did the same thing: Obama took over General Motors because General Motors was in trouble. Obama had to bail them out, had to save them, and what did he want to do? He wanted to profit. General Motors needed to make a profit to stay in business. Then Obama gums up the profit motive by making them produce this electric car that, sadly, nobody wants. We all want General Motors to do well.
Especially before Obama bought it and gave it to the unions. See, Bain never gave a company to the unions. If Bain Capital had bought a company and given it to the unions, Obama would love ’em. But his point was that there’s all kinds of great potential political ads waiting to be made because Obama closed a bunch of dealerships, and it turns out that a majority of the dealerships that Obama (the government) shut down, were Republican-owned GM dealerships.
Not all, but most of them were. So the caller’s thought was, “Go out and get some of these dealers, and do a bunch of political ads about how Obama runs a company — and how Obama is seeking profit for his own company, General Motors.” Well, the Romney team does have a response to the Bain attack. The Romney rapid response team has made an ad out of the Cory Booker remark, and we have the audio of it.
ANNOUNCER: Have you had enough of President Obama’s attacks on free enterprise? His own key supporters have. Democrat mayor Cory Booker of New Jersey…
BOOKER: I have to say, from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity.
ANNOUNCER: Former congressman Harold Ford Jr., Democrat from Tennessee…
FORD: Private equity is not a bad thing. As a matter of fact, private equity is a good thing in many, many instances.
ANNOUNCER: Former Obama economic adviser and auto czar Steven Rattner, a leading Democrat…
RATTNER: And I don’t think there’s anything Bain Capital did that they need to be embarrassed about.
BOOKER: Look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record. They’ve done a lot to support businesses and grow businesses.
ANNOUNCER: Even Obama’s own supporters have done enough.
BOOKER: It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough!
RUSH: That’s Cory Booker. So they did put an ad together, and they did rapidly get the ad up capitalizing on this stuff. As I say, the Romney rapid response team has been pretty good. Whether it was Hilary Rosen attacking Ann Romney for never having worked a day in her life, I think they’re pretty quick to the draw. I mean, it’s much better than what the McCain team was doing. It’s not even a comparison.