RUSH: I want to take you back, last Friday, listen to something I said on this program.

RUSH ARCHIVE: The truth of the matter is that fighting Obamacare, trying to defund it or delay it, whichever, and engaging in the shutdown heightened attention to the miserable failure Obamacare and this rollout is. And I’m gonna tell you something, folks. I got an Obamacare stack, and I’m gonna get into it in the program today, and I wouldn’t be surprised — I’m not gonna predict this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, before the end of the year — I think they’re gonna have to do something before the end of the year to officially delay this, otherwise it’s gonna cream ’em. It is that bad. And there is nothing that Cruz or Mike Lee or anybody else in the Tea Party did to cover that up. It was not a strategerical error in the slightest.

RUSH: Let me reemphasize something here. I said it a moment ago. I think the truth that Ted Cruz and Mike Lee fighting this thing, trying to defund it, delay it, whatever, engaging in the shutdown, I think all of that helped bring attention to the miserable failure Obamacare is. And the fact that they did it so bravely, loudly, consistently, courageously, has also served another purpose. It has given the impression the Republican Party has nothing to do with it. The Republican Party, therefore, can’t be blamed with part of this failure here because they’ve got nothing to do with it. The Republican Party, because of Cruz and Lee, is now seen by low-information voters as not wanting any part of this and as being right. That it should be delayed. That it should be defunded. That it should be held off on for a while.

And while they were doing this, their own party was trying to sabotage them. Their own party was trying to malign them and impugn them, but they persevered and in the process the entire Republican Party is now going to benefit from what they did in this. So it was last Friday that I, El Rushbo, your beloved host, said with not ontological certitude, but pretty close to it, that this is such a bomb that they’re gonna have to, before the end of the year, do something to hold this off in order to prevent utter collapse. That was last Friday. Let’s go now to last night, the NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams with correspondent Tom Costello reporting about the regime’s decision to delay the deadline for the mandate.

WILLIAMS: Breaking news out of Washington. After the debacle on the Internet surrounding the rollout of Obamacare, we have learned tonight that because of the staggering computer problems, because of the millions of Americans who have tried to line up coverage but have been turned away instead, the administration now intends to slide the deadline for the so-called individual mandate for health care coverage. Details of this are still coming in to us. We want to begin with NBC’s Tom Costello, who’s been covering it all since day one. He’s in our DC newsroom tonight. Tom, good evening.

COSTELLO: Hi, Brian. The White House tells NBC News of plans to move the deadline for individuals to be required to buy health insurance by as much as six weeks.

RUSH: Yes. You see, that’s what the New York Times is calling a tweak. Obama just arbitrarily (imitating Obama), “Well, we’re going to delay that deadline for individuals required to have insurance by six weeks.” But that’s not gonna matter. They can’t fix this in six weeks, and now you’ve got every Democrat senator up for reelection who wants a full-year delay of the individual mandate until January 15. That’s after the 2014 elections. Here’s Joe Manchin last night on The O’Baxter Factor on the Fox News Channel.

MANCHIN: What we’ve said is it should be a transition year for one year. There should be no fines, and let’s work through the problems. We’ve got a lot of problems; they’ve been identified; I think everybody’s recognized them. Let’s fix it. Ours has a certainty of time. January 1, 2015, no fines whatsoever, transition in, work out the kinks, let’s fix this thing.

RUSH: Right on, dude, right on, let’s fix it, let us fix it, let’s go team, let’s fix it, let’s delay it ’til January of 2015. The longer the individual — I want to whisper this. I don’t want you to tell anybody, ’cause if this gets out — (whispering) the individual mandate is the guts. If that goes, the whole thing goes. But don’t tell. I don’t want Obama to know that. ‘Cause if Obama hears that, he won’t delay it and he’ll tell these Senators to take a hike. So just keep that between you and me, but don’t doubt me. Well, I mean if it stands to reason, if the law requires you to have insurance and then doesn’t, bye-bye Obamacare.