RUSH: I want to play for you some audio sound bites to illustrate, too, that it’s not across-the-board that the media thinks Virginia was a great thing for the Democrats last night. Let’s start with the Today Show today with Chuck Todd and his report about yesterday’s election results. And basically what he says here is that the mixed results and the Democrats, in truth, behind closed doors are in a little bit of a panic.
TODD: The first test of the political climate is decidedly mixed this morning in this day after with the dust settled. Republicans are crowing about the big Chris Christie landslide in New Jersey as he prepares to become the national front-runner for the 2016 presidential race, and the Tea Party is feeling no less emboldened. Today, finger pointing, Tea Party activists very upset about what might have been in Virginia, and Democrats quietly in a mini-panic about how health care almost cost them that governor’s race.
RUSH: See, there is one of my favorite phrases, “the dirty little secret.” When the Democrats get together and if any of them are honest with each other, they know that going into next year’s elections they have a huge problem with Obamacare, major, major problem. They’re looking at Virginia as Obamacare almost doing them in. Remember, there was a story in The Politico three days ago about Cuccinelli’s stench of doom. Three days ago, The Politico, which today is writing about how Cuccinelli coulda won this thing if the Republicans had just been in there to help him. Three days ago, The Politico was talking about his campaign being the stench of doom, because you had that third-party ringer in there, that Libertarian third-party guy coupled with McAuliffe and all this Democrat money and the support of the Clintons.
It was supposed to be a landslide! And Obamacare, without any Republican help whatsoever, Obamacare almost did the guy in, and they know it, and F. Chuck had the audacity here to report it. And this is an interesting tidbit from F. Chuck. Matt Lauer on the Today Show, said, “Chris Christie has been very critical of the Republican strategy of shutting down the government last month. He called it a monumental failure. So what message does his victory yesterday in New Jersey send to the right-wing of his party, in particular the Tea Party?”
TODD: I think they’re looking down in Virginia and they sit there and say, “Hey, guess what, we stuck to our guns, we tried to make health care the be-all, end-all issue, and those establishment Republicans walked away from us.” In fact, I had Cuccinelli people last night telling me they spent weeks begging Chris Christie to come to Virginia and campaign with Cuccinelli. Christie said no.
RUSH: Yeah. And Christie’s running around also trying to play off and benefit from this allegation that the Republicans caused the shutdown and something like that will never happen if he’s elected, because, as he said (paraphrasing), “You know, watch how we did it in Trenton. I worked with ’em, and I can do it in Washington. You watch me. There won’t be any shutdowns.” Big whoop. We want to beat Democrats. Now, the Christie people, “Well, what more do you want? We slaughtered the Democrat here.” The Democrat, I don’t even know her first name. You talk about a placeholder. The Democrats didn’t want to defeat Christie. What does that tell you? They didn’t care to.
Now, you might be saying, “Rush, the Democrats knew they had no prayer. They didn’t want to waste any money. It’s not they didn’t want to beat Christie. It’s that they knew they couldn’t and they weren’t gonna waste a good candidate and waste any good money.” Are you telling me that the Democrats aren’t on a roll, don’t think they can just wipe the slate? Do not be too smart by half here. So Christie refuses to help another Republican, joins in this fray that the Republican wackos caused the shutdown. “There isn’t gonna be any of that childish behavior if I get there. We’re never gonna shutdown the government. We’re gonna work with the Democrats,” blah, blah, blah. And everybody, “Oh, yeah, man, we can’t wait for this.”
Meanwhile, Christie loses to Hillary in the exit poll question of who would you vote for president in New Jersey in the midst of a landslide reelection. Charlie Rose and John Dickerson. John Dickerson is the political director CBS, they’re on CBS This Morning today, and they’re talking about the Virginia gubernatorial race, and they’re even talking here about how the Republican establishment blew it by not backing Cuccinelli.
ROSE: Is it possible that the Republicans this morning are saying, “If we had worked harder, if we had done more, if we made health care a bigger issue, we woulda won this thing”?
DICKERSON: That’s absolutely right. The establishment didn’t put money into Virginia. “If they had and if they’d really pushed in this state, we might have won.” That’s absolutely the message that people can take out of Virginia, and they probably will.
RUSH: Well, they didn’t on purpose, is the thing. Chamber of Commerce didn’t spend a dime. The RNC, one-third or not even that much of what they spent four years ago. There was no help. Folks, I’m telling you, they are not gonna be unhappy at all that Cuccinelli loses if they can secure that blame on the Tea Party.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just got really, really great news about Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims. I’m gonna share that with you the top of the next hour. But I wanted to stick to the issues here first, and there’s also news out of Miami with the Dolphin situation involving the guard Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin and the bullying story down there. You know, there’s another aspect.
I got a note from a friend with a reminder, and this is an excellent point about New Jersey. It’s just something interesting, a little factoid here to throw in the hopper, and it’s something that nobody’s talking about. It’s Cory Booker. You remember Christie could have had one big election where he was on the ballot in his governor race and Booker was on the ballot in the Senate race.
In other words, the election yesterday, there could have the Senate race with Booker as the Democrat candidate. Instead, Governor Christie intentionally scheduled an extra election two weeks ago so that he and Booker would not be on the ballot the same day. And the reason for that is that Booker would have drastically increased the Democrat turnout, because he’s way more popular in New Jersey than the woman that they ran against Christie.
The woman’s name is Buono, B-u-o-n-o.
What is her first name? Do you know her first name? (interruption) Barbara? Eh. The broadcast engineer knows. The guy who pays the least attention to anything knows. I didn’t mean that. I’m just trying to come up with an analogy. Of all the experts here, we didn’t even know her name. That’s how much of a nonfactor she was. So Christie, using the powers that he has, scheduled a separate election for Booker so that there was no vast, huge Democrat turnout during yesterday’s election.
The Booker election took place two weeks ago — and, of course, Governor Christie knew this, so he scheduled this separate election in the Senate race. He could do it because it was a special election, because, remember, Senator Lautenberg passed away. So that necessitated a special election, and Christie could schedule that whenever he wanted to. That way he didn’t have to worry about a lot of Cory Booker supporters showing up yesterday.
(interruption)
That’s true. Christie could have appointed a Republican to fill the seat and hold it. But he didn’t do that either. No, he had to show he’s a team player. “It’s a Democrat seat, so we’re gonna let the Democrats keep it. It’s fair. I’ll show that we’re not the mean-spirited creeps that they claim that we are,” whatever. Here’s Candy Crowley from the Barack Obama debate team. Candy Crowley, CNN, Anderson Cooper 360 last night. Cooper said, “What do you make of the results in Virginia,” Candy? Fresh off your tour here on the Obama debate team, what do you make of these results? “How significant,” really, are they?
CROWLEY: This is clearly not some huge rejection of the Tea Party. Cuccinelli did a lot better. He was outgunned 10 to one in the last few days, in the last couple of weeks in advertising. McAuliffe was out early and just pounded Cuccinelli with the anti-woman theme.
COOPER: Right, a lot of social issues.
CROWLEY: A lot of social issues.
RUSH: Now you have to admit, in Candy Crowley’s worldview, the Tea Party remaining prominent is good because in her worldview, the Tea Party will secure a Democrat victory every time. So it’s in her interest. I don’t expect that she’s being totally objective. I don’t know if this is an objective analysis so much as a partisan analysis. “Oh, we can’t rule the Tea Party out. The Tea Party’s the biggest, greatest thing they’ve got going.”
That’s how they’re misjudging things.