RUSH: So I’m doing show prep last night, and I’m seeing a bunch of stuff that we mentioned yesterday. And I think, here we go, classic examples, cutting edge of societal evolution. For example, I didn’t get to the audio yesterday, but I talked about it, Axelrod and what he said about Marco Rubio. That video played all night. I was shooting myself for not getting to the audio of it yesterday, but we did talk about it. This is Axelrod. Axelrod said, “I think it would be an insult to the Hispanic community to choose Senator Rubio if he thinks that that is somehow — if Governor Romney thinks that’s sort of a get-out-of-jail-free card for all of the things and the positions that he’s taken.”

The point that I made about this yesterday, and I’m gonna make it again, is that the Republicans can’t win for losing. The Democrats tell ’em they must reach out to the black community, must reach out to the Hispanic community. So then they float a rumor that Rubio might be the VP, and, “You can’t do that! Why, all that horrible stuff you’ve said about immigration and the Hispanics and the stuff that we know you mean. You hate minorities. You want a get-out-of-jail-free card for all this horrible, rotten… So they say it’s just a surface maneuver, not genuine, but what it really indicates is how those people think. It doesn’t indicate how Romney’s thinking. It indicates how Axelrod and the Democrats are thinking.

You know, my question is, where is Obama? Is Axelrod the candidate or is Obama the candidate? All Obama’s doing is running around doing fundraisers. Last night it was Barack Obama on Broadway. Did you see that? He took over some Broadway theater for a fundraiser, and you’ve got Axelrod out acting as the candidate. He was in Boston at that press conference where he got heckled. Now he’s going on TV and he’s saying the things that Obama ought to be saying, but Obama’s not saying ’cause he’s too busy out raising money. But I think it’s a sign of the panic these people are in. And I’ll tell you something else, and this dovetails with a constant consistent theme on this program. We all — I mean us Republicans, conservatives — I don’t, but a lot of other people think the left is invincible, that the Democrats are invincible, that they’re light years ahead of us strategically, competence-wise when it comes to running campaigns. I don’t think that at all.

I think these people are in an abject state of panic. I don’t think they have the slightest idea what to do. For example, in 2008 that campaign was really… I think Daffy Duck could have beaten McCain. For one reason, McCain didn’t really want to win. He just wanted the resume enhancement, having “candidate” on the resume. He wasn’t really trying to win. You don’t suspend your campaign if you’re really trying to win, middle of an economic crisis. You don’t campaign the way he did if you really want to win. You don’t tell everybody on your team, “We’re not gonna criticize Obama. We’re not gonna criticize Jeremiah Wright.” If you really want to win, you don’t do that.

So Obama’s coming off eight years of Bush having been beaten up and not defending himself and nobody in the Bush regime had defended itself. They hated the Iraq war. They convinced everybody it was a recession, unemployment was trending down, and Obama is running around even now lamenting. It’s another thing we had yesterday, Obama wishing he had McCain instead of Romney. Oh, yeah, yeah. (imitating Obama) “John, he believed in global warming, and John believed in all these things that I believe in. There was some overlap.” But Obama has had the road paved for him. Normally what’s happened for Obama is that his associates find dirt on his opponent and get ’em out of the race. Like the poor Jack Ryan guy in Illinois. He was running for Senate against Obama, and somebody leaked some private divorce documents involving sex scandals, and that was the end of Ryan. They sent in Alan Keyes.

So, Obama is basically unopposed. The only time Obama really lost an election was to Bobby Rush when he was opposed by a legitimate candidate. In 2008 they had a cakewalk, I think, when you get right down to it, and they don’t have a cakewalk this time, is my point. I don’t think these people are the best and brightest campaigners. I don’t think they know what they’re doing. I think they’re flailing away at the fact that they can’t come up with anything other than what they did in 2008, and I say all this to keep everybody fired up, intense, and confident, because there’s every reason in the world to be. Everybody falls pray to this notion that they outstrategize and us that they’re smarter and they’re dirtier and they cheat more. Some of that may be true, but they’re not better; they’re not smarter.

They may be fearful of what people think of ’em. They don’t care, for example, what’s gonna be said about them vis-a-vis minorities or being racists or whatever. They don’t have a straitjacket that they live in like the Republicans do. But in terms of downright just base competence and strategy… you know, the biggest problem Obama has in this reelection is that Romney hasn’t been divorced. So there aren’t any hidden divorce papers. There’s no hidden prenup. There’s no dirt to be found on Romney. That’s why the Washington Post went out and tried to create some dirt from 50 years ago. That’s it, that Romney bullied some long-haired, maggot-infested, dope smoking-type kid back in prep school, and that was it. It’s a typical Obama campaign. It blew up on ’em. It didn’t work. So we get Rubio as a rumored veep, there goes Axelrod, “you know what, these guys, he just wants a get-out-of-jail-free card. He just wants make people look like he cares about Hispanics, but everybody knows that Romney and Republicans hate Hispanics and blah, blah.

Then we had Shrum yesterday. Bob Shrum, who’s never won advising a Democrat candidate for president, he’s an 0-fer. His most recent 0-fer was John Kerry who, by the way, served in Vietnam. Bob Shrum, who I think… (laughing) If Bob Shrum could be anybody he’s not, it would be Roger Ailes. Shrum has always dreamed of himself as the Roger Ailes of the Democrat Party. But he’s not. Just don’t doubt me on this. At any rate, Bob Shrum was on Face the Nation. You know, Bob Schieffer was head spinning Sunday because kept asking Axelrod about the negative campaign, “Why are you guys going so negative?” ’cause, you know, Schieffer, he drank the Kool-Aid. He thinks we’re dealing still with The Messiah, and he thinks all this hope and change stuff is still the order of the day.

So the Obama campaign is going typical Obama negative, dirt, and Schieffer’s head is spinning. He can’t believe it, and he asked Axelrod, “Why are you going so negative?” So he had trouble with that. Then Shrum came along, and Shrum actually admitted, “If this election’s about Obama’s record, we’re toast.” If it’s a referendum on Obama, he’s toast. So we had it yesterday. It made news all over the place last night. Here it is. Here are the sound bites. We got two of them, this from Sunday’s Face the Nation.

SHRUM: You just let this be a referendum. I don’t think the president could win, because the truth of the matter is he may have created over 4.3 million jobs. He may have saved General Motors, but the country’s still not back to where it needs to be. So this needs to be a choice election.

RUSH: A choice election. You know, as I listen to these people who are considered heavyweights, the Democrat Party hierarchy, Shrum clearly would be one, Clinton, I don’t hear a lot of love for Obama. I mean they’re saying things that you wouldn’t say if you really wanted the guy to win. You’d avoid the negatives. You don’t highlight the negatives. You don’t put ’em under the spotlight. I mean, if you’re gonna talk about statements about how to win or lose, it’s for us to say we want to win against Obama, his record, that’s what we say. For the Democrats, a high-ranking Democrat to come out and say that, sabotage.

Dick Morris says Clinton is telling people privately he wants Obama to lose. Dick Morris said on television that he knows some conservatives who know Clinton. That might be Chris Ruddy. I don’t know. It’s unnamed. But apparently Clinton is telling conservatives that you got six months to save the country. That’s what Dick Morris says. Clinton said, (imitating Clinton) “You got six months, you got six months to save the country. I’m not for this guy, but I can’t say it publicly.” Now, after Morris went on television and said that, then Clinton later goes out and endorses Obama. But the things he’s doing are not helping Obama, such as the endorsement of Romney.

So Shrum is out there saying: “Ah, if it’s a referendum on Obama, he can’t win.” You don’t say that about your own team. Here’s the next Shrum bite. Bob Schieffer…

SCHIEFFER: I think there are a lot of Republicans that are out there saying, “Did you hear that Bob Shrum just said that if this is a referendum on Barack Obama, he would lose?”

SHRUM: Well, I think that… Look, I’m being honest. If this is simply a referendum on the condition of the economy and the country, people aren’t happy yet.

RUSH: I thought that was Bush’s fault, though. Isn’t the Obama strategery to blame Bush for that? Shrum is saying everybody can blame Obama! Now, he may think that, but you don’t say it if you’re on the Obama team. You blame Bush. Even if, in your heart of hearts, you know it’s not true. These people are not dumb. I mean, they’re in politics. They know full well how to lose and how to win. Well, some of them don’t know how to win. But they think they do.

But the one thing that you don’t do is you don’t undercut your candidate’s theme. And the theme is: “Obama inherited a worse mess than anybody knew, and it’s gonna take longer than anybody knew to get us out of it — and the mess was given to us by Bush.” And here’s Shrum out there saying, “Well, look, I’m just being honest. If it’s a referendum on the condition of the economy…” He is admitting it’s Obama’s; it’s not Bush’s. This is big stuff. And I could tell you, it’s double-big stuff because Schieffer’s out there flabbergasted.

Schieffer says (sputtering imitation), “Da-da-da… Do you know what you just said here on a — on a State-Controlled show?” They’re stunned out there.

Of course, we got Wisconsin that’s going on today. This is a showdown.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I got some people flooding my e-mail at the Rush Limbaugh website, the Rush 24/7 e-mail saying I’m doing the audience a disservice. That I am making too big a deal out of Bob Shrum. Let me tell you something. Shrum said two things that are no-no’s for Democrats. He said, “Let’s face reality.” They never, never say “let’s face reality” and mean it. Their reality equals ruin. And the next thing Shrum said was, “Look, I’m being honest.” Those are huge no-no’s for Democrats. They don’t say that. If they’re ever honest about things that they intend to do or have done, they don’t win anything. That’s the point.

As we sit here today, I’m telling you, they are in a state of panic at the Obama campaign.
Now, I always have a caveat when I say this. Anything can change, because it can. But right now they don’t know where they are. They have no sense of it. They weren’t prepared to be where they are. They’re not prepared to deal with a situation that does not feature idolatry, devotion, and love. They can’t get beyond that. They can’t run on the issues. They can’t run on the record. They can’t run on any of the current reality, and they don’t know how else to do it. And if they don’t have something larger than life to promote and sell — and Romney has not been divorced and there’s no dirt there — they are in trouble.