RUSH: Let’s go back to audio sound bites. Grab number eight. This is Dan Pfeiffer. He’s the second in command, White House spokesman. He’s behind Jay Carney. Now, you keep hearing that Republicans are extremists, mean-spirited, and all of this stuff. I want you to listen to this. Last night on CNN’s The Lead, the host, Jacob Tapper, is interviewing the senior advisor, communications advisor, Dan Pfeiffer.
Tapper said, “Let’s talk about the default, because the Treasury secretary said it could be catastrophic if we defaulted on our debts. Why isn’t Obama negotiating as he has in the past? I mean, in the past he negotiated on the debt ceiling and now he’s refusing to. If it’s gonna be catastrophic, why not get in there and roll up your sleeves and try to negotiate?”
PFEIFFER: It’s a negotiation if I’m trying to sell you my house and we are debating the price of it. It is not a negotiation if I show up at your house and say, “Give me everything inside or I’m gonna burn it down.” The Republicans have provided a laundry list of essentially ransom demands of things that were essentially the Romney agenda that was rejected by voters that they know can’t pass in normal circumstances. They say, “Give us these things or we’ll blow up the economy.”
RUSH: Is that right?
The Republicans are threatening to blow up the economy? (laughing) I’d like to see that. They might get some support. “Give us these things, or we’re gonna blow up the economy”? So then Tapper said, “Well, look, this the final question. You saw today a Bloomberg News poll indicating that the American people support, by a two-to-one margin, its right to require spending cuts when negotiating the debt ceiling. I understand the Keystone pipeline, other provisions the Republicans are talking about attaching to the debt ceiling are not related, but why not cut some spending, Mr. Pfeiffer?
PFEIFFER: What we’re not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest. We’re not gonna do that. We cannot live in a world where one half of one branch of government can extract their — their demands that have been rejected by voters and can’t pass under normal circumstances or they’re gonna blow up the economy.
RUSH: Well, he said it again. The Republicans have bombs strapped to themselves! They want to blow up the economy! But we can’t do what the Republicans want because they lost. Has that ever stopped the Democrats? When they lose elections, do Republican judicial nominees just sail through under the theory that the Democrats were rejected by the people? When Republicans win elections, do their tax cut ideas just sail through under the guise, under the theory that, “Well, they won the election.
“We can’t let the Democrats do what they want. They lost!”
This is condescending arrogance that’s not pushed back against, and maybe somebody… Well, look, these guys are just a bunch of creeps. Let ’em keep talking, and, just like the health care law’s gonna collapse, these guys are gonna be seen for the real mean people they are. Okay. So Dan Pfeiffer. Low-information voters, if they even watch CNN, are gonna realize, “This Pfeiffer guy is a mean guy and we can’t vote for Democrats!”
Is that how this is gonna work?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. So this Dan Pfeiffer guy, he’s in charge of White House communications, senior advisor to the president for strategery and communications, he says the Republicans are running around with a bomb in their vests and they want to blow up the economy, defund Obamacare and government shutdown and all that kind of stuff. Don’t forget, back in 2006 Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Pelosi, the rest of the Democrat Party, demanded that we defund our troops or they would vote against raising the debt ceiling.
Do you remember this? And Obama and Pfeiffer were asked about this. Well, wait a minute, now. How come, you know, Obama said it was purely political. He was against raising the debt limit, funding the troops and all that, and they said, “Well, that wasn’t political like the Republicans are doing now.” But these guys — Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Reid — they all threatened, demanded, that they wanted Bush to lose. They wanted America to lose the Iraq war. They threatened to defund the military operation in Iraq or they’d vote against the debt ceiling, raising it.