RUSH: You know what I was told earlier today, and actually last night, but mostly this morning? I was told, “Rush, you gotta be really on your game today because there are gonna be a lot of people tuning in to you today to find out what’s what, and a lot of independents, Rush, are gonna be tuning in to you. You’re the only guy who nobody knows his thoughts. Everybody else was all over TV and Twitter last night, but nobody knows what you think. You may have the largest audience you’ve had in a long time, there may be a lot of independents in there. Yeah, I know all that.

JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH: Greetings my friends. Great to have you here. It is Open Line Friday, and I am happy to be your host. It’s a thrill and delight to be here with you each and every day. Open Line Friday we change the rules a bit on callers. Monday through Thursday, you have to talk about something I’m interested in or you don’t get on the air. On Friday doesn’t matter. Whatever you want to talk about is what we talk about, whether I care about it or not. So here’s the — the number again is 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

Did you ever think in your lifetime you would ever see an angry white old guy be so popular with the news media and with the American left? I thought they didn’t like angry white guys. They happen to love Joe Biden, an angry white guy. For those of you who are tuning in to find out if there’s anything different here than what you have heard elsewhere, I don’t know, because I haven’t purposely spent much time listening to what other people think. I seldom do that ’cause I don’t want to be accused of mimicking or copying anybody. But I just have to tell you something.

I am aware that the consensus opinion seems to be that Biden was mean, rude, and disrespectful. What I want to say to you is that the Joe Biden that you saw last night is the Democrat Party. It’s the modern Democrat Party, particularly the last 12 years. It’s who they are. Chris Matthews on MSNBC, after the Romney-Obama debate, said, “We need an MSNBC debate.” That’s what they got last night. I mean, the Democrat Party is rude; it is disrespectful. I kept thinking last night, “What are the independents thinking watching this?” ‘Cause we’re told the independents don’t like all that. We’re told that women and independents don’t like shouting and being rude and disrespectful and so forth.

I’m here to tell you, I think there are two things that happened last night. Biden did exactly what was desired, and in the process hurt himself and Obama. His job was to go out there and excite the base. His job is to go out there and get ’em revved up. They were livid, they were ticked off, because Obama didn’t do diddly-squat in the first debate. They were mad because Obama basically stood there like a statue. The Democrat Party, for those of you who are casual participants, the Democrat Party is a very mean-spirited, extreme — Biden personified what we’ve been dealing with for 12 years, ever since Bush-Gore, ever since the 2000 election and the recount aftermath. This is who they’ve been.

I thought it was great. I thought they came out of their shell. None of this so-called compassion and understanding. Biden’s express purpose was to go out there and get that base revved up, and what does that base want? That base wants blood. The base wants rude. The base wants disrespect. The Democrat base is made up of people who literally hate Republicans. Biden gave them exactly what they wanted. In the process, he didn’t help Obama, and he didn’t help himself, with the electorate at large.

The debate isn’t going to matter in terms of polls. In fact, the polling data for Obama, it’s continuing to get worse. The Suffolk University polling unit that’s pulled out of Virginia and Florida and North Carolina, they’ve got Romney up 51 points in Florida and Virginia, up over Obama by seven. They pulled out. They were right to pull out. North Carolina is pretty much gonna be the same thing. Real Clear Politics says Obama has a lock on seven states. Seven states is all Obama has a lock on right now.

But back to Biden, Biden’s behavior last night, I can’t emphasize this enough. For those of you who are regular listeners to the program, bear with me here. You know all this. I am specifically addressing those who may be tuning in here for the first time in a while or the first time ever, and I’m relishing this opportunity to tell you truthfully and honestly what you saw last night. If you don’t pay much attention to politics, if October every four years is when you start to get interested, you don’t see that Joe Biden on MSNBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, you don’t see it. You don’t see it reflected in the New York Times or the Washington Post. But Joe Biden was the Democrat Party that we’re all dealing with for the past 12 years. Maybe not Obama in terms of personality and character, but governance, dealing with Republicans.

Biden was no different than an SEIU official beating up a black conservative at a town hall meeting in St. Louis. It was no different than that. I mean, he didn’t hit anybody with his fists last night, but he was rude, overbearing. You know what I think? There was the usual: “Well, if you saw it on TV, was one thing, if you heard it on radio it was another, if you read it, it was another thing.” People who saw this on TV, I’m gonna tell you what they’re gonna come away with. They’re gonna come away with the conclusion that Paul Ryan was a son who’s a little embarrassed of his father and is trying to tell his father how out of step his father has become. He was trying to do it with respect. He was trying to do it without offending or embarrassing his dad, but he was trying to tell his dad the world has passed him by.

His dad was the blustery old guy. His dad was the guy that walks into the bar, braggadocios and so forth. Martha Raddatz was the bartender in this analogy. Don’t be surprised at Raddatz. I told you Raddatz was gonna behave as she did. It was in the cards. It was predictable. Ryan knew it. It isn’t an excuse. You can get mad and you can say it was unfair, but, believe me, everybody else saw that it was unfair. Everybody else saw that it was rude. Everybody else saw this is a stacked deck. Everybody saw it the way you did, except the Democrat underground types or the Democrat bloggers.

This was get even for what happened in the Romney-Obama debate. They were salivating for that. They’re making a mistake of thinking Biden’s performance is gonna somehow change the direction the election’s going. It’s not. Because Biden didn’t tell the truth about anything, particularly about Libya, particularly about security, particularly about the wars that he voted for, that he claimed he didn’t. He voted for both Afghanistan and Iraq. He claimed that he and Obama weren’t told that there were requests for additional security in Libya. But that misses the whole point.

I’m gonna start from square one on this Libya business because these guys — Obama, Biden, the media, the Democrats — have totally bollixed this. They have misjudged it because of their worldview and their incompetence. They are placing this nation at risk all over the world with their incompetence and their liberal worldview. But Biden didn’t tell much of the truth last night, in addition to everything else.

Some of you might wish that Ryan would have been feistier and not let them run all over him and all that. My guess is that he doesn’t debate much. He might have been under orders: “Look, just get through this thing. Let Biden be who we know he’s gonna be and realize you’re in a two-against-one situation and deal with it the best you can.” In the process, you saw a man who couldn’t tell the truth, a man who would not shut up.

You saw a mean-spirited, rude, overbearing, disrespectful vice president of the United States who epitomizes and epitomized the Democrat Party today. Joe Biden is who they are. We deal with them every day. We’ve dealt with them for 12 years (in my case, personally). They’re not nice people. Contrary to their branding and contrary to their image. You saw Biden. That’s who he is! I didn’t tell you that’s who Biden was gonna be and he is. You saw Biden for yourself.

Now, here. This what I said about Martha Raddatz.

This was Wednesday predicting what she was gonna do as moderator of the debate.

RUSH ARCHIVE: [H]er job is gonna be to make sure that Ryan doesn’t run roughshod, that Ryan doesn’t get away with speaking longer than the rules permit, all this kind of stuff. I’ll tell you, the left and the others in the media and the regime are gonna be really, really counting on Martha Raddatz. The moderator here is gonna be viewed as just as important if not more so than Biden. Gotta make sure the balance remains in favor of Biden.

RUSH: So it was predictable that she was gonna do that, and she did it. I mean, you’ve seen the stats of how many interruptions and how many questions versus how many interruptions of questions for Biden. It was clearly stacked, clearly unfair, and it was obvious to everybody. If you thought it was unfair, you’re not in a vacuum. Everybody thought the same thing. Even CNN said Raddatz was the third debater.

But I don’t care where you go, folks. You go to flash polls, the CNN poll. I’ve got the internals in the CNN poll. Biden didn’t win anything. Women hated Biden’s behavior last night. Women despised his disrespectful behavior. Independents didn’t like it, either. A lot of them are saying, “Who the hell is this guy anyway? What’s he ever done?” He came across as the 35, 40-year career Washingtonian.

Just one thing that bothered me is that the whole night Ryan was caricatured as the incumbent and Biden as the challenger. I’m talking about all this economic mess. If you listen to Biden, it was caused by Romney and Ryan. When, in fact, Biden owns it! Obama owns it. We got a ton of sound bites today. Ryan got some things in that were shouted over and talked over and made fun of.

He cited Jack Kennedy and his Economic Club of New York 1962 speech for tax cuts. We played those sound bites for you on this show years ago. You have heard those sound bites. I have ’em ready to go again. Biden stepped right into it. “Oh, you’re Jack Kennedy now, are you? Oh, you’re Jack Kennedy?” and Ryan said, “Much closer than you are,” and he was right. But this Libya stuff, folks, and the lying on the security and what happened at Benghazi, this is big.

I mean, this is really serious stuff, and Biden was laughing at all of this. He was laughing at people’s economic circumstance. He was laughing during serious discussions. People who tune into this stuff three or four weeks before an election, this is when they take it seriously. And they saw Joe Biden laughing at all this, laughing at their economic circumstance, laughing at what has happened in Benghazi, laughing over everything that came up in the first hour of this debate.

I know what he was trying to do. He was trying to make it look like, “Ah, this poor young kid! He has no idea what he’s talking about. Ho-ho! Gawd, do you believe what you’re hearing? This guy, this little clown-looking guy? Hee-hee-hee-hee! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” It didn’t come off that way. It came off as rude, disrespectful, and, in fact, defensive. It came off as though Biden himself was a little nervous, trying to cover up and not have to discuss a record that he and Obama own.

Anyway, sit tight, folks. We’re coming back. Much more right after this. Do not go anywhere.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Open Line Friday. Rush Limbaugh, here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.

It was! That was the real Joe Biden last night. You know, folks, we hear the political class all the time talking — and I’m including Republicans in this. Republicans in the political class in Washington, in the media class, say, “Oh, that’s old Joe! Oh, Joe is just Joe.” How many times last night did you hear, “He’s such a nice guy”? He’s not a nice guy! He is a partisan liberal Democrat who’s tried to destroy the career of Robert Bork. He’s tried to destroy the career of Clarence Thomas.

He is not a nice man.

He has mastered theatrics, which is what politics is today, but he’s not a nice man. This is the central theme, to me, of the Democrat Party. They are not nice people! I’m really imploring those of you who don’t pay attention to this: The Joe Biden you saw last night is the Democrat Party. And actually from further back than 2000. I picked the year 2000 because I don’t want to have to challenge your memory beyond that.

We’ve gotta put a limit on it somewhere, and 2000 is as good as anyplace to start. They lost their minds after Bush v. Gore and the Supreme Court decision shutting down fraudulent recount after recount after recount in the 2000 presidential popular vote in Florida. They just lost their minds. They have been consumed with hatred ever since. Literal, genuine hatred. The way Biden treated Paul Ryan last night is the way they treated George W. Bush for eight years.

I don’t want to make this personal, but I’ve been treated this way by these people for 25 years. This is who they are. He’s not good old nice old Joe. “Ah, he’s the crazy uncle in the attic.” No. He is a partisan Democrat who has no compunction whatsoever telling lies about decent, honorable people in the process of trying to destroy their careers. Now, I’m sorry. We Republicans do not do that.

When the Democrats nominate Supreme Court justices or circuit court judges or what have you, they generally get what they want. It’s very rare that we try to deny them, and even when we do, we don’t tell to destroy these people. We focus on their records! We try to explain to people why they might not be good on the court. These people try to destroy their enemies’ lives. They do everything they can to criminalize policy they disagree with.

So I think the lesson is there to be learned if you want to.

Some of you may not want to accept what I’m saying, but Joe Biden last night is the Democrat Party. Turn on any cable news network that’s not Fox and that’s what you see. Look at any typical liberal Democrat guest or commentator or analyst or consultant on Fox and that’s what you see, with a couple of exceptions. This is who they are! They’re mad, they’re angry, and especially last night it was, “Get even!” It was, “Get even!” It was, “Recapture lost ground.” It was, “Make sure the base gets fired up!”

How do you do that?

Give them a bunch of hatred and red meat.

That’s what Biden did, ’cause he knows how.

That’s who he is.