RUSH: Marco Rubio — again, I want to apologize to all of you. I had the Rubio story for the past two days and because I had other priorities and things that I thought were a little bit more important, I kept moving it down the Stack. I didn’t get to it either yesterday or the day before and I should have because my instincts were correct and it has blown up exactly as I thought it would. Essentially what’s happening here is that Rubio is being Romneyed.

Now, Rubio has as part of his stump speech where he says that socialism, quote, “hasn’t worked in 6,000 years of recorded history.” So Rubio granted an interview to Gentleman’s Quarterly, GQ. And he was asked a question: “How old do you think the earth is?” Now, many of you probably caught that the moment you heard about it or saw it, but for those of you who didn’t, let me tell you what the question is. Yeah, and it’s a question that’s been asked of Obama. It’s a question that’s been asked of a number of politicians. It’s not something exclusive to Rubio, but the intent is exclusive to Rubio.

I take you back to January of this year. Mitt Romney and the Republican candidates were having a candidates debate as part of the primary process, and out of the blue George Stephanopoulos, no doubt in coordination with the regime, asked Romney a question about contraceptives and whether he would like to ban them. It came out of nowhere. Prior to this debate, and I don’t think at any point in the campaign, had the Republicans said anything about contraception. Now, they were talking about abortion, but they weren’t talking about contraception, and certainly not banning it.

So Romney looked totally shell-shocked when he got this question. He didn’t know what it was about, it related to nothing, it came out of nowhere, and he answered it a couple of times in that vein. He looked around, “Where’s this coming from, George?” And Stephanopoulos persisted and persisted because the game was to get Romney to just, in the slightest way, substantively address the question. And Stephanopoulos finally said, “Okay, what about the states, would you let the states?”

“Well,” Romney said, “If you’re gonna have a discussion about banning contraception, yeah, that’s not a federal issue, George, president wouldn’t have anything to do with it. States would be a place where that would happen. But, George, nobody’s talking about it.” It didn’t matter that nobody was talking about it. From that moment on that’s what gave birth to the War on Women. A totally irrelevant, unrelated to anything question that Romney answered and, therefore, Romney on record, the template could be written, “Romney says X about contraception.” Doesn’t matter what he said. He’s discussing it within the framework of Stephanopoulos’ question of should it be banned and, hello, War on Women. And that begot everything. That one question.

Now, this question to Rubio is for the same reason, even though the question or a variation of it has also been asked of Obama and other politicians. In fact, Rubio’s answer and Obama’s answer are pretty close.

Here is what Rubio said. “IÂ’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think thatÂ’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. IÂ’m not a scientist. I donÂ’t think IÂ’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, IÂ’m not sure weÂ’ll ever be able to answer that. ItÂ’s one of the great mysteries.”

I don’t know what you think of the answer, but that answer has landed him in hot water in the Republican Party and in the media. On CNN Tuesday, Jeb Bush Jr., the son of the former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Jeb Bush Jr. said that Rubio, quote, “Kinda gave a head-scratching type of answer. We’ve got to be a pro-science and pro-technology party. I think Marco Rubio is just that. On the Earth question, I guess I have to read more closely in terms of getting a better understanding, but, yeah, kind of a strange response, I guess.”

There’s a feature at the blog Hot Air. It’s written by a blogger by the name of Allahpundit. It’s quotes of the day. The quotes of the day last night were all about Rubio’s answer, and they’re all for the most part condemning Rubio’s answer. And Mark Halperin was on Scarborough’s show and said this about Rubio’s answer. “There’s one area where the Democrats are just really far ahead of Republicans right now, science and technology. It’s doing this thing that Democrats failed to do in 2000 to stop George W. Bush, which is really, really early on using the left wing freak show to define anybody who’s thinking of running for president as quickly as possible in negative terms on Twitter, on cable, on the Internet. Now, they’re all over this Rubio thing because they want to control his image in a negative way, and they did it. They did it this cycle. They went after Romney early. It really hurt him, and they’re doing it now.”

What are they doing? Why is Rubio’s answer of 6,000 years of recorded history, you’ve got to understand — furthermore, you know, I’m to the point of convening a little confab, a weekend confab of all potential Republican candidates and giving them a short little preview of what they can expect from the media and how to deal with it and what media to avoid. What is Rubio doing with GQ? They’re the enemy. Now, that’s a side issue. That’s a side point.

But, you see, ladies and gentlemen, the press is the Democrat Party, and they are out now to destroy Rubio. He’s the front-runner. The same way they destroyed Palin. The way they’re doing it with this question. They’re trying to paint Rubio as an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian wacko. Now, he’s a Catholic. But they are trying, because those in the fundamentalist Christian right-wing, it is believed, do not care about science. They’re strictly biblical, and science can go take a hike. And where science may say that the earth is billions of years old and that the evolutionary relative to man might be hundreds of thousands of years old, they believe the earth itself is 10,000 years old, and everything else is bunk.

The global warming debate is also set up to cast Republicans as anti-science. The problem is that science has been politicized by the left, and science isn’t science anymore. Science is no different than illegal immigration in terms of the media’s technique. The media is trying to get Republicans to abandon their base. So they love it when all of our Republican candidates say, “You know what, we gotta relax our view on immigration. We gotta relax our view on abortion.” That is designed to have every Republican front-runner screw up and anger his base to the point that they will never trust him and never vote for him. That’s all this is.

All these science questions are designed to illustrate to the same kind of people that bought everything Obama and the media were saying about Bush and about Romney, that Rubio is a dangerous, fundamentalist Christian who really wants to deny you your abortion, who wants to deny you your contraception, who wants to morally judge you. He hates gay marriage. They’ll never make the allegation per se, but this is the image that they have crafted of fundamentalist Christians. The Christian right, the pro-lifers, whatever you want to call ’em, they’re stupid, by the way, in addition to narrow and restrictive and so forth.

So this question, “How old do you think the earth is?” is a trap question. From the get-go, this question is designed to put Rubio on the defensive, to define him as something that he’s not, to destroy any chance he has or harm any chance he has of linking solidly with the Republican base. They’re already, folks, trying to take out Republican front-runners four years from now. What are we doing? We’re trying to figure out how to make ’em like us again. We’re trying to figure out how to make ’em stop criticizing us so we relax what we say on abortion or immigration or what have you.

Six thousand years of recorded history may be true. Doesn’t say a thing about how long or how old the earth is or anything, but Rubio’s answer’s not even relevant. All he had to do was answer it and he’s cooked, as far as these people are concerned. You want to hear Obama’s answer to the question? Obama got the question. He was speaking at the Compassion Forum, Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, on April 13th of 2008. Question: “Senator, if one of your daughters asked you, ‘Daddy, did God really create the world in six days, what would you say?'”

Obama said, ” What I’ve said to them is that I believe that God created the universe and that the six days in the Bible may not be six days as we understand it … it may not be 24-hour days, and that’s what I believe. I know there’s always a debate between those who read the Bible literally and those who don’t, and I think it’s a legitimate debate within the Christian community of which I’m a part. My belief is that the story that the Bible tells about God creating this magnificent Earth on which we live — that is essentially true, that is fundamentally true. Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible: That, I don’t presume to know.”

The answer is almost identical to Rubio’s, but Obama is never gonna be thought of as a fundamentalist right-wing Christian who’s anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-gay marriage, anti-whatever people want to do. But Rubio is. There’s always a double standard here. And now, predictably and disappointingly, a bunch of conservative media people are also jumping all over Rubio for being a nitwit and an idiot, not understanding the relationship between science and politics and science and religion. The age of the earth is the ultimate gotcha question for any Christian Republican politician. Six thousand years of recorded history’s actually true. Recorded history.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, the answer to this question is very simple. Senator Rubio, how old do you think the earth is? ” I agree with President Obama. I agree with what President Obama said.” It’s that simple, because Obama and Rubio said nothing different. Also note the different ways the questions were asked. The question brought up to Obama was very gentle and about his daughters at a religious forum. “Mr. President, if one of your lovely daughters came and said, ‘Daddy, Daddy, how long did it take God to build the earth?” Obama gives his answer, he’s a wonderful father. He’s an educated Christian, wonderful guy.

Rubio was asked by a snarky, typical leftist reporter at the snarky GQ, “So just how old do you think the earth is?”

“I agree with Obama. I agree with what President Obama said about this. Next question.”

Actually, don’t submit to a request for an interview from GQ. But if you’re gonna do that, understand what the purpose is. It is to take you out. You know, I learned a long time ago, these journalists don’t care what you think. You can’t impress them. You can’t change their minds, and you cannot use their forum to reach out to their audience. It will not be permitted. What do our candidates gain by talking to George Stephanopoulos? It would be like being interviewed by Carville or Stan Greenberg. What is there to gain? You ever notice that libs, when they appear on Fox, how do they do it? They’re snarky, they’re argumentative. They’re not trying to reach out to the conservative audience at all.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Doug in Tampa as we do Open Line Friday on Wednesday. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, pleasure to speak to you, and it’s kind of ironic you put it that way. It seems like maybe Romney being a Mormon might be a good person to marry more than one.

RUSH: Of all things — (laughing)

CALLER: But, seriously, thank you for having me on, sir.

RUSH: Oh, man, you bet, man, wonderful to have you.

CALLER: I appreciate everything you do and happy Thanksgiving to you.

RUSH: Yeah, same to you. I’m gonna have three Thanksgivings.

CALLER: Well, good for you.

RUSH: That’s right.

CALLER: You deserve it. You deserve it.

RUSH: Three different families.

CALLER: You pay for it as a one-percenter, too, so we appreciate it.

RUSH: That’s true.

CALLER: My point being, and I know your answer is we should be more conservative, be more proud of it, but I think the fact that Rubio and Romney both have to tiptoe around the question about the age of the earth and any type of religious type of question like that, I think that kind of proves that maybe we pander a little more to the right, or religious right, than what we should. I’m sounding like a bad Catholic right now, but I really think that —

RUSH: What is pandering?

CALLER: Well, not answering questions the way that they would not like to hear, pro-life.

RUSH: How do you know he didn’t answer it the way he intended to?

CALLER: Well, I’m a Rubio guy. And I think that Obama’s answer as into we don’t know maybe the time of days —

RUSH: Rubio’s answer is the same answer.

CALLER: Not really because —

RUSH: Yes, it is.

CALLER: — tiptoed around it, he tiptoes around it. It’s all perception. He may actually think that way but when it comes out — because you’re right, the media is going to set him up with stuff like that all the time.

RUSH: I submit to you that Rubio tiptoeing around it not pandering to the Christian right, but rather it’s understanding that the reporter’s got a loaded gun pointed to his head. He’s not pandering to the right. He’s trying to save his career with the stupid question from the stupid reporter. Pure and simple. That’s a setup from the get-go. He knows that. I’m sure he knows that. This is exactly what they want. They want conservative Republicans to renounce the Christian right. They are dying for that to happen. They can’t wait for it to happen. And not for any reason other than they know that it would do great damage for any Republican candidate and his relationship with base voters.

This is raw, pure politics. You take any candidate’s base of support away from him, and there’s no way he wins anything. And if they can take the base out, if they can build a huge amount of doubt about Rubio in the base, why are they doing it? Because they’re scared of him. Folks, it’s why I told you from the get-go they were scared to death of Sarah Palin. They’re actually trying to do to Rubio what they did to Palin. And that’s why I got so angry when Republicans started beating up on Palin and agreeing with all this, that she was stupid or an idiot, because they fell for it. They fell right in line with the effort to destroy her politically, and that’s what they’re trying to do to Rubio. And he doesn’t need any Republicans joining in the firing squad.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Folks, let me just tell you, on this question of how old is the earth, Obama’s the guy that’s got some explaining to do, not Rubio. I mean, if you’re gonna ask these two guys Rubio and Obama how old is the earth, doesn’t Obama know? Wasn’t he there when it all started? He knows. He knows when the sea levels started receding or rising. He knows what happened. And he just tosses the question off and they blame Rubio. It’s senseless.