RUSH: Again, I want to go back. There are two polling groups that have pulled out of Virginia (one of them a month ago) saying that it’s over in and North Carolina. Suffolk Polling pulled out. TheyÂ’re thinking, “It’s over there. We’re not gonna spend any more money there.”

Another poll pulled out of Florida yesterday or the day before. But the Drive-Bys continue to poll these states, obviously, and the Drive-Bys continue to put out polling data. “It’s tied! It’s Obama here, Obama there, Romney there!” Nobody knows. That’s why I say it’s a turnout election now. It really is a turnout election. I was reading something today…

And all of this is anecdotal. I’m almost reluctant to pass this kind of stuff on because you can’t say that it means anything nationally, but it’s still interesting to hear. A college professor sent a note. I think it was to National Review, but it might have been Red State or some other blog. The college professor said (summarized), “You know, students in my classes this year could not care less about this election, versus the students in my class four years ago.

“This year, they don’t care. They’re not even paying much attention to it. And in a turnout election, if that means anything — if that ever could be extrapolated and said to have some scientific relationship to students across the country — it’s not good for Obama.” But you just don’t know. Here’s a story from the Washington Times by Ralph Hallow.

The headline: “Analysts Say Polls Point to Romney Triumph — The tidal wave of anti-debt, anti-big-government voters that swamped Democrats in the 2010 congressional elections is readying itself again, poised to sweep Mitt Romney into the Oval Office… ‘ItÂ’s very, very likely,Â’ veteran Republican campaign pollster John McLaughlin [whoÂ’s working with Dick Morris] said, predicting a Romney tsunami Tuesday.

“‘Romney has surged in all the target states,’ Mr. McLaughlin said. ‘The undecided vote is not really undecided. They overwhelmingly disapprove of the job the president has done and will largely vote against the incumbent. It’s a hidden vote that will vote against the president.’” This is John McLaughlin, a recognized Republican pollster, again working with Dick Morris.

He said the undecided vote really has made up their minds and it’s anti-Obama. The question is do they show up or not. ThatÂ’s really what it’s gonna come down to. The undecideds may not vote. Or they may. But they are undecided because they’re not voting for Obama. That’s what “undecided” at this stage always means. They always break, a vast majority of them break against the incumbent. Now, there’s also…

Oh, what is their point about the…? Well, it’ll come to me. But the next story is from Dan Henninger today in the Wall Street Journal. “Romney’s Secret Voting Block.” Oh, I know what it was. It’s all about some people have analyzed what the Obama strategy is, and I think they’re right about this. What the Obama campaign team is doing is trying to re-create 2008Â’s turnout. They’re trying to re-create that coalition of support.

And in the process, the analysts are saying that the mistake the Obama people are making is to ignore what happened in 2010. I have to tell you, folks, I think everybody’s ignoring 2010 except me. I think 2010 matters big time. Now, the experts, the analysts, consultants, disagree. I’m not one of those. I mean, I’m not a political professional; I’m a professional, real radio announcer.

But 2010 was huge.

That’s the Tea Party. That’s average Americans fed up, getting involved for the first time in their lives over debt and the growing size of government and what it means to their kids, and they’ve not gone anywhere. And they’re just as upset now as they were in 2010. And I think any campaign that thinks that has died out or that that doesn’t matter because it was a midterm election and presidential races are different…

And they are. There’s no candidate in the 2010 midterms, which I think is even worse for Obama. These were people coming out against ideas, which is what we want. I mean, if you get into Politics 101 or Civics 101, we’ve seen all the details. When you first start learning about this stuff, the thing that you’re taught is that the best ideas win. It’s only later that you learn how the business gets corrupted and how money matters.

ItÂ’s only then you learn how votes are purchased and there’s fraud and deceit and all that kind of stuff. But in the clean, baby-like infant world when you’re first learning, you think ideas matter. Well, that’s what was great about 2010. That was an ideas election. It was Obama’s ideas being rejected and Obama himself being rejected, and it was a huge landslide defeat for the Democrats. And they are choosing to ignore that.

They think it doesn’t matter. They’re trying to re-create what happened in 2008 without considering what happened in 2010. Now, this is why some of the analysts on our side are predicting a big Romney win. But 2010 does matter. It really happened. And it was devastating for the Democrats, and it’s not done one thing but get worse since then. It hasn’t gotten any better.

Spending has gone up, the debt has gotten larger, family income has shrunk, and unemployment has gone up. The poverty level has gone up. The number of people on food stamps has almost doubled. I mean, from 2008, it’s disaster out there. And I think people that just wanna write 2010 off as an anomaly — which is what Obama’s doing — that’s the essence of wishful thinking, if you ask me.

That’s the avoidance of reality, if you ask me.

To sweep 2010 away doesn’t mean because it wasn’t a presidential race, there weren’t any candidates. Now you have candidates out there, national candidates: Romney and Obama. That’s gonna change the way people vote as opposed to way they vote in midterms. We shall see. But 2010 was an uprising in this country against Obama and everything he stands for and an uprising against the Democrat Party.

Now, I can understand why they’d want to try to pretend it didn’t happen ’cause these people create these little bubbles of reality in which they live, and anything that challenges it they don’t let in. And Daniel Henninger today, Wall Street Journal: “Romney’s Secret Voting Bloc.” I love this. I love this. Because I think this is true as well. He starts out this way:

“You’ve heard about Mitt Romney’s problems with the women’s vote, the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the union vote and the young Democrats vote. But there’s one major voting group that’s fallen off the map since the primaries,” that nobody’s talking about. Nobody is referencing them, nobody is factoring them. Snerdley, off the top of your fertile mind do you…? (interruption) Nope, not white males. White males might be a subgroup of this group, but it’s not what Henninger is talking about.

“The evangelical vote.” The evangelical vote. What would you call them, the religious right, the value voters, or (as they would say at Planned Parenthood), “The damn pro-lifers.” Some moderate Republicans would say “damn pro-lifers,” too, but they’re not being counted on. They’re not being polled. They’re not being factored. They’re not considered a constituency.

I’ll tell you the story again. You’ve heard this story, I’m sorry, but I’m gonna tell it again because of the new-tune-in factor here. You wouldn’t believe each week the number of people tuning into this program for the first time after 25 years. I was at a big bash of establishment Republican donors and fundraisers and cabinet secretaries in the early nineties in the Hamptons. After dinner — and I’ve only been doing the show by that time four years or so, so I’m still really still green. I’m still really naive in a lot of ways. I, for example, think that we’re all Republicans and we’re all on the same team.

I had this one guy (who you would know if I were to ever announce his name) come up to me on the deck after dinner and start poking me in the chest with the index finger. He said to me, “What are you gonna do about the Christians?” I, quite naturally, was taken aback. I didn’t know what he was talking about, because he was mad.

I said, “What are you talking about?”

“That damn abortion! We’re never gonna win a damn election as long as those people are considered prominent in our party. ItÂ’s never gonna happen. They turn women off every damn day! WeÂ’re never gonna win. We gotta get rid of them.”

I looked at him and said, “You know, they are 24 million votes. You wouldn’t be winning any election without them.”

Then he said, “All right, I’m just kidding you. I’m just having a little fun with you,” and maybe part of it was.

But I’ve always known since then that at certain levels of the Republican establishment there is a deep fear of these people, ’cause they’re embarrassing to go to the convention with and they’re considered single-issue voters. Their wives are all feminists and don’t like these people and they get nagged about it. But the point is, they are a large part of the Tea Party. They are a large part of the what happened in 2010. And the evangelicals, the media hates ’em, the Democrats hate ’em, and they tell themselves that they don’t matter. They’re just a bunch of really dumb, stupid, single-issue people.

Have you heard any discussion of this voting bloc in this whole campaign? You haven’t, have you? They are 24 million votes. They always have been. And they are way under the radar of the Drive-Bys, at least publicly. I’m sure that Axelrod and Plouffe and these guys live in mortal fear of them. They’re never gonna acknowledge it. But, you see, the media and the Democrats are not interested or even curious to learn anything about these people. They so despise them and resent them, and conservatives in general. Liberals don’t even care to understand us. They just reject. The same thing with Tea Party people. They’re dumb, stupid. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re not professionals. They’re just these average citizens that show up at town halls, they don’t know what they’re doing. So there’s a resentment of them, and they’re denigrated. They’re impugned and laughed at.

They love to report on the Obama agenda, the War on Women and the gay activist vote, blacks, illegals, college students, but in the 2002 midterms, they got gobsmacked. I remember I was on election night coverage with Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert, and they had no idea what hit ’em. And in the exit polls of the midterms in 2002, the value voters, the number one issue for Republicans that voted in the midterms was values, Democrat Party values. And everybody was shocked. Now, the evangelical vote doesn’t vote every year. They don’t vote every election. They are the kind that will sit out elections if they’re single issue or maybe their top two issues are not met. It’s spending and it’s life, and if those things are not addressed, they’ll sit out rather than vote. But if they show up and vote, they’re never accounted for. And Henninger’s piece here is all about there’s a whole bunch of them that are going to vote. In fact, Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, has just fairly recently began to mobilize his flock in this regard.

Let me take a break. I gotta take a break otherwise engineer is gonna panic and I’ll have big trouble.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, as to the evangelicals. “When Mitt Romney’s 2012 candidacy was gaining traction in the primaries, the conventional wisdom instantly conveyed that the evangelical vote, skeptical of Mormonism, would sink him. What if in Ohio next week the opposite is true? There and in other swing states — Wisconsin, Iowa, North Carolina, Florida — the evangelical vote is flying beneath the media’s radar. It’s a lot of voters not to notice. In the 2008 presidential vote, they were 30% of the vote in Ohio, 31% in Iowa and 26% in Wisconsin.” And a lot of people voted for Obama because they bought into this messianic stuff.

But they aren’t buying into it anymore. Once you fail at being messiah you don’t ever get that back. They’re 24 million, maybe more now. It was 24 million in the early nineties. Look at how much of the voting bloc they were in 2008. Thirty percent in these states. Imagine they go for Romney. And I don’t care what poll you look at, that group is not part of the demographic breakout.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One of the things about the evangelicals: They don’t talk to pollsters. They don’t talk to them. Go back to 2008. One of the reasons that McCain chose Palin was because the evangelical vote didn’t want anything to do with McCain.

They tried to rally the evangelical vote with the election is of Palin. It didn’t quite work. They didn’t vote in 2008. A lot of people just didn’t vote. Now, this is why the selection of Paul Ryan was inspired. Ryan is… I mean, he’s clean and pure as the wind-driven snow and he means it. He’s just… He’s a good boy. He’s a good boy, and he inspires confidence. “We can do this! We can do this!” Meaning, fix this problem.

(interruption) Well, no, I know they don’t talk to… (interruption) I’ll tell you: If you don’t believe me, you go talk to anybody in the Bush 41 campaign team in 1988. ThatÂ’s 1988, not ’92. Go back 1988. Bush 41 lost Iowa because of the evangelical vote, and they didn’t know it until afterwards. It helped them eventually, ‘cause Iowa was up there near the top.