RUSH: I kid you not. Folks, this is from the Washington Post. You’re gonna think I’m making this up. From the Washington Post: “Latino Voters Say Health Care, Controversial Remark Spur Them to Turn Out for McAuliffe.”
Now, what was the “controversial remark” that he made? I’m gonna tell you. This is from the article in the Washington Post. Cuccinelli “was pilloried in a Democratic campaign commercial for a remark he made criticizing a DC law on pest control, which he claimed prevented the killing of rats. ‘It is worse than our immigration policy,’ Cuccinelli said in a 2012 radio interview. ‘You can’t break up rat families … and you can’t even kill ’em.'”
It’s true. In Washington, you cannot kill rats. You have to capture the rats and move them, out of compassion for them, and he opposed that. “In a Spanish-language television ad that aired last month, Virginia’s Democratic Party denounced the comment — which Cuccinelli’s campaign said was taken out of context. ‘He was talking about how disturbing it was that our laws treat rats better than people, because our laws let us break up immigrant families,’ Republican Party spokesman Garren Shipley said.
“But judging by interviews with Latino voters on Tuesday, the ad … resonated.” All Cuccinelli did, is he opposed the Washington, DC, law. The city has a policy: If you find a rat population, you can’t kill the rat or the population. You have to round them up and move them someplace, and he was saying, “For crying out loud, we’re treating rats better than we do immigrants,” and that became “Cuccinelli anti-immigrant and anti-rat!”
I kid you not.
They made hay on the fact that, on an animal rights issue, that Cuccinelli hates animals, hates rats, and hates immigrants.
That’s what they did with that comment, and there’s no push-back on it. No, I’m not kidding. I’m reading to you verbatim from the Washington Post. I am not kidding. The law in DC says that you cannot kill a rat. If you see a rat in your building or in a warehouse, you have to capture it, find its family, and move it. You can’t kill it. The animal rights wackos have gotten in there and said you can’t do it. And Cuccinelli heard about that (paraphrasing), “Well, that’s the silliest thing. They spread disease, vermin, my God.” If you can’t find the rat family, how the hell do you find a rat family? But if it’s a single mother rat, if it’s a single rat, if it’s a teenager rate, if it’s a straggler rat, how do you find its freaking family, for crying out loud? Well, you can’t.
So you take the rat and you move it, and the DC people, “That’s breaking up rat families, and it’s horrible.” So Cuccinelli said, “My God, that law is silly. We’re treating rats better than we’re treating immigrants.” And they turned that into a Cuccinelli hates rats and hates immigrants commercial. Then they put it on Twitter, and the low-information universe out there picks this stuff up, “Cuccinelli, wow, what a rotten ass guy. This guy kill rats? For crying out loud.”
You tell me how to combat this stuff. It’s just out and out outrageous. This is not even lies. This is the kind of thing, folks, that 20 years ago you didn’t worry about ’cause nobody would fall for this. It wouldn’t influence anybody. You have a policy that protects rats and you get defeated, you lose an election. Now the guy that wants to kill the rats or move ’em or whatever, get ’em out of here, he’s the problem. That’s why nobody knows what to do with this. ‘Cause in the old days everybody was sensible.
We got rat advocates and they happen to be Democrats and residents of the nation’s capital. And the rat advocates decided to take it out on Cuccinelli. (interruption) Well, you say it’s starting to make sense. Why in the world when this stuff starts happening does the party, Ken Cuccinelli’s party, why do they not move in there, mobilize and assist? It’s just asinine. Totally, totally asinine. Meanwhile, rats are being elected, in a sense.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All during the commercial break Snerdley is saying, “You gotta be making this up. Rats, rat families, relocating ’em, Democrat commercials?” I said, “You don’t really remember this?” Because we did this story back in January of 2012 about a DC law that said when rats were discovered, they could not be killed. They had to be captured and relocated. We even did a parody, People for the Ethical Treatment of Rats, which I’m gonna play for you here in a second.
Now, at the time this happened, Cuccinelli was the attorney general for Virginia, and he didn’t want the city of DC relocating the rats in Virginia. He was trying to protect the people of Virginia. He said this is asinine. And here’s his quote. It appeared in a Cybercast News Service story, he said, “This law is crazier than fiction, because it requires that rats not be killed but captured, preferably in families.” That’s what the law says, by the way.
“No glue or snap traps can be utilized; the rodents must be relocated from where they are captured; and some of these animals may need to be transferred to a ‘wildlife rehabilitator’ as part of their relocation process.” The law does not allow pest control professionals to kill these rats, Cuccinelli said, so, “They have to capture them — then capture them in families.” Cuccinelli said, “Now, how do you do that?”
Can I just ask, how in the world do you identify a rat family? But this is the law in the District of Columbia, and he’s the attorney general of Virginia and he doesn’t want them dumping rats in his state. That became Cuccinelli hates rats, anti-animal. When he was commenting on the law, he said, “We’re treating these rats better than we treat immigrants” because he was talking about how we break up immigrant families in the deportation process sometimes, he was against that.
He was trying to make a pro-immigrant statement in saying we care more about rats than we do immigrants. That was turned into: he’s anti-immigrant and anti-rat on Twitter and in Democrat commercials. January of 2012 is when this all started. When we first heard about it we put together a parody about this stupid, asinine DC law.
(playing of rat spoof)
We did a parody on it. Now, January 13 of 2012, Ken Cuccinelli said that he was worried that a new District of Columbia law that governs how pest control operators have to handle rats may result in entire rodent families are being relocated across the Potomac River into Virginia by DC pest control personnel. And, lo and behold, folks, I don’t know if you know this, or remember this, but there have been reports of growing infestations of rats around the Occupy DC protests at Freedom Plaza and Macpherson Square.
You don’t remember any of this? Well, I didn’t know that they had run this commercial. I didn’t know the Democrats put together this ad claiming that Cuccinelli’s anti-rat family. He ended up getting a majority of the Hispanic vote on that ad. They turned that into Cuccinelli compares immigrants to rats. And, you know, the ad runs and the Cuccinelli people are watching this ad and they’re thinking nobody’s gonna believe this. Just like you don’t believe it. You don’t believe it happened even now, and I’m telling you it happened. You can’t believe it.
Not only didn’t happen, apparently it swung the majority Hispanic vote to McAuliffe, to The Punk, because it turned voters away from Cuccinelli. When this kind of low-information stuff triumphs, what do you do? Now, the way to beat the Democrats on this War on Women stuff is gonna be Obamacare. But the Republicans are gonna have to want to beat back Obamacare, and right now they don’t. They’re fighting any Republican that wants to beat back Obamacare.
Related Links