RUSH: This is from this morning, CBS This Morning. John Dickerson is on, the political director at CBS, with the co-host, Norah O’Donnell, and they’re talking about Obama’s gender gap.

O’DONNELL: We talk a lot about the women’s vote and the importance of the women’s vote but Gallup has some interesting numbers out that there’s a actually been a larger change in men than in women’s preferences compared to 2008. Look at this huge split, Romney advantage over Obama. This is a big gap for Obama! What’s happening with Obama support among men?

DICKERSON: It’s a big and dangerous gap. The president can’t make up for a gap among men, uhh, with women. He’s got to shrink that gap, uh, with men, and — and the thinking basically is that it’s — that it’s on the economy and his stewardship and this notion that four more years of this — what the president has, uh, his economic policies — just isn’t gonna cut it and that men are the ones who are moving on that issue particularly.

RUSH: So the way to translate that is to say that Obama’s gender gap with men cannot be made up with women. By the way, that’s the way it is every election. I so enjoy informing people after elections of this gender breakout, ’cause every four years the Democrats think they gotta get women and every four years women who are gonna determine the outcome. And the bottom line is you don’t win elections without a majority of men.

It’s very rare that that’s not the case.

It has, of course, happened, but you don’t win elections without a majority of the men. I don’t say this in any way other than an electoral analysis. It’s just the way it is. But the gender gap is not the only problem Obama’s got. He has a huge gap in independents. It is astounding, and it’s been this way a while. The Democrat Party lost independents big time in the 2010 midterms, and Obama is polling horribly among independents as well as among men, as well as white working-class voters.

And I’ll give you the details of the independent gap ’cause it’s huge, too.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, so we had a news report, an analyst opinion from CBS that there are simply not enough women voters that Obama could get that can make up for the gender gap that Obama has in men. And it is a fact. We talk about the female vote all the time, but you don’t win without a majority of men. That’s generally the rule. There are exceptions to it of course.

But if you look at all of these polls, the real gap is in independents. Now, I don’t have any details on the Gallup today. The Gallup poll has tightened. It was Romney plus five. Now it’s Romney plus two. Just get ready. I told you that the Gallup’s an outlier out there. Gallup are the only people that had this at five or six. They finished number 15 or 16 in terms of accuracy in 2008.

But being out there with Romney five or six… And being sued by the Justice Department, pressured by Obama campaign guy, Axelrod? You put Romney plus five or plus six, and you’ve got room to move Romney down to plus three. And then you can say Obama’s surging. And if you want, you can peg it to the debate on Monday night. And right on cue, the Drive-Bys are reporting an Obama surge today in the Gallup poll.

All of this is very predictable, and you knew it was gonna happen before it happened because you listen here every day. But the independent gap… Remember what everybody tells us? Every four years we hear, “The independents, the moderates, that’s where elections are won and lost!” Every political consultant tries to get hired by candidates by saying, “I’m the guy that can come up with the strategy that gets you the independents, because you know you can get your base. You don’t need me for that.

“And the other guy is gonna get his base. And the general rule of thumb is, 40% are committed on the Republican side, 40% on the Democrat side. That leaves that great 20% in the middle.” We’re told every four years by people on our side that you gotta go get that 20%. Now, it’s going, too… A little side line: We’ve got our own little internecine battle going on in the Republican Party.

The Republican Party does not want conservatism credited for success.

The Republican Party wants “moderation,” “walking across the aisle,” “working together,” to be the reason the party wins elections. That’s what they want everybody to understand. You know it and I know it. There’s not a whole lot of love for conservatives in the Republican Party. Except now, where the party will take anything they can get to win. They always tell us it’s the independents.

The reason for that is the independents are undecided, and they’re not partisan. They’re not conservatives, they’re not liberals, and so whoever wins with the independents proves the point that they win without the base of the party. Now, the Democrats are not embarrassed of their base. The Republicans, in large part, are. Except around election time where they’ll take it. That’s why I focus here on the independent gap.

Because we’re told by the experts that the independents is where it’s at. And if that’s true, the independent gap is huge, and it’s pro-Romney. In the latest Rasmussen, Romney is plus four. He’s at 50%. He has a Democrat-plus-three advantage in his sample, and Romney is plus 12 in independents. Now, I know numbers are hard to follow when I tell ’em to you. We’ll link to this chart at RushLimbaugh.com.

But the numbers will still make an impact. The Gallup poll. Not today’s. Yesterday’s Gallup poll had Romney plus five, but we don’t know what the independent spread there was and we don’t know what the party ID split was. All we know is Romney was plus five. In the ABC/Washington Post tracking poll, the latest data is Romney plus one with a Democrat sample of plus five. But Romney’s plus nine in independents.

That’s huge. According to what we’ve been told by the expert strategists and consultants, that’s all it is. If Romney’s this far ahead in independents, Obama doesn’t have a chance because independents determine the outcome, right? That’s what they always tell us. Public Policy Polling/Daily Kos poll: Romney plus four. Democrat sample plus two. Romney plus 14 independents. Public Policy Polling separate poll, daily track:

Candidates are even. Democrat sample of plus four. Romney plus seven independents. Ipsos/Reuters: Obama leads by one with a Democrat sample of plus four but Romney is plus five in independents in a poll that shows Obama up one. Investor’s Business Daily: Obama plus two, Democrat sample plus seven, Romney plus 11 independents. ARG, Associated Research Group or whatever it is: Romney plus two, Democrat sample of plus five, but Romney plus 16 independents.

Monmouth Survey USA. This is USA Today. They use Survey USA a lot. Romney plus three, Democrat sample of plus four. Romney plus 19 independents. Just to shorten this up, without mentioning the polls, here’s the independent spread in the polls I just mentioned to you: Romney plus 12, Romney plus 9, Romney plus 14, Romney plus 7, Romney up 5, Romney up 11, Romney up 16, Romney up 19. There are only two polls that have Obama up in independents.

One’s CBS. That has him up four with independents. The other is Politico, the Battleground poll. That has Obama up one with independents. Well, in The Politico poll, Romney’s winning plus two, Democrat sample plus four. So the independent gap here is big, and it is plus Romney. It’s the latest data, but it does not include today. It’s polling data as of yesterday.