RUSH: Romney gave a great speech yesterday. I tell you, I was doing show prep yesterday afternoon about 4:30. And I go home and I just dig into stuff for the next day’s show. Life is show prep for me. And I start reading things about a knock-down, drag-out, best-of-his-career speech that Romney gave in Irwin, Pennsylvania. I kind of sat up on that ’cause I used to live in Irwin. I lived in Irwin. Irwin is close to McKeesport. That’s the first place I worked, a suburb of Pittsburgh. W…? What was the name of that station? Well, it was an oldies format.
They called it “Solid Rock and Gold.” I called it “Salted Rot and Mold,” ’cause it’s an oldies station. They had a play list of about 75 records, and that’s all it was. I got sick of playing it. That’s why I got fired playing for playing Under My Thumb too many times. That’s the first time I got fired. I called my dad.
“You what?”
“I got fired.”
“Why?”
“I played a song too many times.”
He was never gonna understand that. He couldn’t understand playing a song too many times, A, or why one would get fired for doing it, other than the bosses were always right. The authority figures were always right. The teacher is always right. The principal’s always right. The boss is always right. But, anyway, Irwin is where I lived, and Romney was there, and this speech of his apparently was great. We got sound bites from it. Let’s listen to a little bit of it when we come back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here we go. Mitt Romney, Irwin, Pennsylvania. By the way, you know this was a good speech ’cause you haven’t seen anything about it anywhere, have you? Have you? The Drive-Bys aren’t covering this. The Drive-Bys aren’t covering it. It’s not anywhere to be found in the State-Controlled Media. Here’s Romney in Irwin, Pennsylvania. It’s a campaign event. We have several sound bites.
ROMNEY: The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza (chuckles), that Ray Kroc didn’t build McDonald’s, that Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft? You go on down the list. To say something like that is not just foolishness, it’s insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America —
AUDIENCE: (wild cheering)
ROMNEY: — and it’s wrong!
AUDIENCE: (wild cheering)
RUSH: Whoa! Whoa! He is fired up out there.
By the way, I was thinking of movie villains. Harry Reid as The Thing. Since everybody wants a conspiracy, how about the comic book figure The Thing named after Harry Reid? That’s a perfect description of Harry Reid. He’s just a thing. He takes up space in the Senate, obstructing all the reforms the House passes. He’s not an action hero. He’s just an inaction hack Harry Reid: The Thing! Dingy Harry.
Here’s more Romney, fired up, obviously.
ROMNEY: I don’t think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business. And my own view is that what the president said was both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a president of the United States. It goes to something I’ve spoken about from the beginning of the campaign, that this election is to a great degree about the soul of America. Do we believe in an America that is great because of government, or do we believe in an America that’s great because of free people allowed to pursue their dreams and build their future?
AUDIENCE: (thunderous cheering and applause)
RUSH: You know, folks, I think this actually made Romney mad! I actually think that what Obama said finally ticked Romney off. I think Romney now has realized Obama is not a nice guy who’s just befuddled and wrong. That was Romney’s prior description of Obama: “He’s a nice guy, just doesn’t know what he’s doing.” I think this really got to Romney. Let’s squeeze one more in here…
ROMNEY: I’m convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success. I want Americans to welcome and to celebrate success and to encourage people to reach as high as they can — and, in some cases, to build enterprises. I don’t want government to take credit for what the individuals of America accomplish. Whether they work in government or work in the private sector, it’s the people of America that make America the unique nation, the exceptional nation that it is!
AUDIENCE: (wild cheering and applause)
ROMNEY: I want to encourage economic freedom. Our economy is driven by free people pursuing their ideas and their dreams. It is not driven by government. And what the president is doing is crushing economic freedom.
RUSH: Yes, siree bob! Something lit a fire. I am convinced that what Obama said actually has made Romney mad. Not in an insulting way. It has made him mad over what we’re up against now. And, of course, as I say: The Obamaites are saying that their guy was “taken out of context.” Right. Okay.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Have you seen anything on Romney’s speech in Irwin, Pennsylvania? “A little bit.” Well, before we go to the break, let’s play sound bite nine again and then follow it up with the last one. This is Romney on fire yesterday in Irwin, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He’s really ticked off now, I think. This is about Obama saying (impression), “You started a business? You didn’t do that! You didn’t make that happen! You didn’t build that. Uhhhh, you didn’t — you — you — you had help! You had a road, a bridge. You didn’t do that.”
And I think Romney is really ticked. I think there’s now a fire burning under the posterior. So here are the two bites. Just bang ’em back-to-back, Mike.
ROMNEY: I’m convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success. I want Americans to welcome and to celebrate success and to encourage people to reach as high as they can — and, in some cases, to build enterprises. I don’t want government to take credit for what the individuals of America accomplish. Whether they work in government or work in the private sector, it’s the people of America that make America the unique nation, the exceptional nation that it is!
AUDIENCE: (wild cheering and applause)
ROMNEY: I want to encourage economic freedom. Our economy is driven by free people pursuing their ideas and their dreams. It is not driven by government. And what the president is doing is crushing economic freedom.
…
ROMNEY: In the past people of both parties understood that encouraging achievement, encouraging success, encouraging people to lift themselves as high as they can, encouraging entrepreneurs, celebrating success instead of attacking it and denigrating it makes America strong.
AUDIENCE: (sustained thunderous applause)
ROMNEY: That’s the right course for this country! His course is extraordinarily foreign!
RUSH: Oh! Did you hear that? “His course is extraordinarily foreign.” One more. It’s not from the speech, but you can hear he’s on fire. All right. He was on WPXI Eyeball TV News in Pittsburgh last night. The reporter doing an interview asked, “There’s a call for you to release your tax returns even from members of your own party. Why not just do it?”
ROMNEY: Oh, I think people in my party just say, “Look, this is a nonissue. Just release the returns and it will all go away.” My experience is that the Democratic Party these days has approached taxes in a very different way than in the past. Their opposition people look for anything they can find to distort, to twist, and to try and make negative. And I want to make this a campaign about the economy and creating jobs. And they want to make this a campaign about attacking people and diverting attention from our job picture in this country.
RUSH: Yeah, so now, see? All the media’s running around saying, “Oh, the conservatives are saying that you should release your tax returns! Why, National Review and George Will are saying it! Even conservatives say it.” But as our buddy Chris Cillizza said (paraphrased): “Yeah, but your problem’s not solvable, Mitt. You can’t solve it.” That’s the smartest thing he’s heard. There’s no way to fix this so-called problem which doesn’t exist. People don’t care about this!
They care about their jobs!
They don’t care about his tax returns!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, Romney is right on the money when he says that he thinks Obama wants people to be ashamed of their success. In fact, I think we’ve already reached that point. There are a lot of people that do everything they can to hide their success. They may not be ashamed of it yet, but that’s what Obama wants. “Don’t be proud of it. Don’t use it as inspiration for other people. Your success needs to be something that you are ashamed of because it came at the expense of other people.
“Your success isn’t yours. You only succeeded because somebody put a road in front of your business. You only succeeded because there’s a bridge over there. You only succeeded because you stole the labor or the business of somebody else.” He wants that to be a collective thought that success is something to be ashamed of. Because the more he can make people think that, the more he can justify taking things away from them.