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RUSH: Here we go back on February 13th, your host on this show…

RUSH ARCHIVE: I think if the election in November were today, it would be a wave election that would make 2010 look small. I think the American people are engaged. The polling data is all there. There isn’t any majority of people, other than subsets of Democrats, who support anything Obama’s doing. In national poll after national poll, a majority of Americans oppose everything Obama’s doing. A Fox News poll came out yesterday, and a huge number of people do not like Obama ignoring the Constitution. A huge percentage is very opposed to this lawless behavior of his. There’s another factor that is gonna lead to a wave election — I mean, massive Democrat defeats, massive Democrat losses in November.

RUSH: Later the same day on the Fox News Channel, on a program titled The Five, we had Dana Perino, Andrea Tarantula, and Bob Beckel commenting.

TARANTULA: I don’t even think it’s gonna be a wave.

PERINO: In my opinion, we don’t need a wave election.

BECKEL: He doesn’t know anything about elections. A wave election would mean you’re gonna knock out somewhere between 15 and 20% of the Democrats in the House and about 10% of the Senate. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

RUSH: Let’s go to a montage we put together Friday through Sunday, of the Drive-By Media talking about wave elections…

CHRIS WALLACE: (music) Can Republicans continue to ride the anti-Obamacare wave through November?

JEFF ZELENY: (b-roll noise) Republicans smell a wave!

MATTHEW DOWD: Big wave always beats big data.

DAVID PLOUFFE: This is a screaming siren. That the same problems that afflicted us in ’10 could face us again.

KARL ROVE: In 2010, Republicans picked up six seats — which is the necessity, a net of six seats this time. It’s highly likely that Republicans pick up a majority.

ROBERT GIBBS: If you lose the Senate, turn out the lights because the party is over.

RUSH: Well, it sounds to me like they all think it’s gonna be a wave election. Well, remember your host, El Rushbo, makes the prediction on February 13th and later the same day, the learned professionals at Fox on The Five, say, “He doesn’t know anything about elections! Wave election means… Hell, he’s crazy. He’s lunatic! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” And then this past week, everybody thinks it’s gonna be a wave.

It’s so bad that we’re even going to win the Senate, they say.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So, February 13th I predicted a wave election. The host on The Five at Fox later the same day pooh-poohed the idea, “Come on, wave election, we don’t even know we won a wave election. Limbaugh doesn’t even know what elections mean.” Now over the weekend, everybody predicting a wave election, including David Plouffe of the Obama campaign, and Robert Gibbs, all thinking that the Republicans are gonna win the Senate. Scott Brown, who announced a run for the Senate again. I think, if I’m not mistaken, did he move to New Hampshire to do this? I read this very casually. He announced at the Republican Northeast leadership conference in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Friday. And here he is on wave elections and so forth.

BROWN: It wasn’t so long ago, I remember it like you do, that the Democratic establishment in Washington was feeling very, very comfortable. A big political wave is about to break in America. And the Obamacare Democrats are on the wrong side of that wave.

RUSH: It really is interesting. I had — just to close the loop on a story — I had some people e-mail me over the weekend, “Hey, Rush, have you sent your iPhone discoveries to any tech bloggers that you read?” And I said, “Yeah.” And they said, “Well, how come we haven’t heard this?” They’re not gonna do anything because I’m the one that discovered it. Just like the ESPN guys didn’t like me joining their turf, these tech guys don’t want me in there. The very fact that I discovered the stuff means they won’t use it. Well, it’s the same thing here. February 13th I, El Rushbo, among the most hated, even in certain Republican circles, predicts a wave election, and the media, “No way. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This is absolutely absurd, not possible. Not even sure that we want a wave.”

Now a month later, no matter where you go you’ve got a bunch of Republicans predicting it’s gonna be a wave election. Just the way it is. Here’s Matthew Dowd. Now, Matthew Dowd’s a former Bush strategist. He’s one of these guys that appeared on TV and it said “Bush strategist” or some such thing, and he’s now kind of off the reservation, No Labels crowd or something like that. And he was on This Week yesterday morning on ABC talking about the David Jolly victory down in Florida last week.

DOWD: This really wasn’t about Jolly, and this really wasn’t fundamentally about Obamacare. What this is about is the mood of the country. And I think Democrats, at their peril, ignore the mood of the country. As the mood changes — and it’s changed this year — the president has a job approval rating in the low forties. And when a president has a job approval rating in the low 40s, the Democratic, the incumbent loses seats.

RUSH: Yeah. As we reminded you last week, Clinton was 46 in the last Gallup poll prior to the November elections in ’94, and the Republicans won the House. Obama in 2010 was at 45, and the Republicans picked up 60 some odd seats. Well, now Obama’s at 41 and going lower, and if that holds up, and if Obama’s in the forties, low forties or high thirties come November, it’s gonna be, according to tradition and history, a shellacking. But here’s this guy, former Republican strategist, “It wasn’t about Jolly.” No, no. He was just the guy on the ballot. “It wasn’t about Jolly. No. And it wasn’t about Obamacare.” No way. Why would anybody think that? It was about the mood of the country. Well, what is defining or dictating the mood of the country? And he goes on to talk about Obama being in the 40s. Why is Obama in the 40s? One of the big reasons is Obamacare.

I’m not trying to be critical of Mr. Dowd, but let’s be straight a minute. This is a guy who’s been intimately involved with Republicans, advising them how to win. And if this guy doesn’t even know why things are happening, or maybe he does and just doesn’t want them getting credit, but this is absurd to say it wasn’t about Jolly and it wasn’t about Obamacare. It was about the mood of the country. Well, how can you separate Obamacare and Obama being in the 40s from the mood of the country?

John King at CNN recently said that the Florida special election results, the David Jolly win, were “the last straw.” This is a quote from John King. Last straw for at least two other House Democrats and maybe more. He didn’t name them, who were facing tough races this year. So if you’ve got John King at CNN and other Democrats saying, “That David Jolly race, that’s it, we’re getting out.” And we’ve already had a huge number of announced retirements by famous, well-known lifer Democrats, Henry Waxman, George Miller, John Dingell. I mean, they’re all over the place. It certainly is setting up.

I’m not trying to inspire any kind of overconfidence, and I’m gonna explain something again. This wave election, if it happens, it has nothing to do with the Republicans, just like 2010 didn’t. And I don’t mean that as a cut. I just mean that the Republicans are not even really trying to draw any distinctions between themselves and Obama. Not in Washington. The Republican establishment’s doing its best to be Democrat lite. Well, in 2010 the Tea Party showed up and they were all animated, informed, motivated to vote against Obama and the Democrats because of the debt, the spending, and Obamacare. So now here we come to the next midterms, four years later, 2014, and nothing’s changed; it’s gotten worse.

Now, midterm turnouts are not the same as presidential turnouts, presidential election year turnouts. You know why? I’ll tell you why. In presidential years, you had a big urban turnout. In the big cities that are owned and run and operated by the Democrats you get a big turnout, ’cause Santa Claus is on the ballot. But in off years, in the midterms, that turnout doesn’t happen. There are many other reasons, too, but that’s the primary reason, the primary difference in the presidential year turnout and the off-year turnout. So 2014 is setting up to be just like 2010, and that is, there’s no single Republican idea out there, despite all these Republicans going up to CPAC, “It’s time for us to stop saying only what we’re against. We have got to say what we’re for.” Yeah, well, that’s fine and dandy, but if you’re gonna be for the same things that Democrats are, just not as stridently, you’re not gonna make any difference.

There is no number one Republican name that dominates politics right now. So there’s not a Republican who could go on television and start talking about what he’s for that’s gonna have any impact on the midterms. This is strictly, again, going to be people I think showing up in droves this time, opposed to Obamacare. See, in 2010 we just had the theory, we had the predictions, we had knowledgeable people, the Tea Party, knowledgeable people who knew and know what all this debt means for them and the country. We had intelligent people, the Tea Party, smart people. Obamacare in 2010, they knew what it was gonna mean.


Well, now we move to 2014, and have those same smart people. But now we’re gonna add to ’em. Now we got people who have been affected by it, not people who are being told what’s going to happen with Obamacare. Now we’ve got people who have lost their insurance. Now we’ve got people who’ve lost their jobs or been downsized. Now we’ve got people who have found out they can’t keep their doctor, can’t keep their insurance plan.

Now we have people who have graduated from college, have all of this student debt, and there aren’t any careers. There aren’t any jobs. In fact, there was a great piece in the Wall Street Journal that puts the jobless number in even greater perspective. I’ll get to that in a minute. But it is shaping up to be a wave. If you look at the 2010 turnout, smart Tea Party people who knew by 2010 what Obama and his presidency meant.

You add four years, and now people who have been affected by it — and it doesn’t matter what the Republicans say or what the Republicans are for or against, because this is going to be like 2010 was, an election of people showing up to protest what is happening. You don’t need any slick marketing. You don’t need any packaging. You don’t need any marketing. You don’t need any kind of guests on TV. You don’t need any kind of slogans.

All you need is the reality of how people’s lives are being really harmed — I mean, really harmed — and these people haven’t done anything to deserve this. Other than some of them might have voted for Obama. But as I’ve traveled around the country, I can’t help it. I am always moved by people as I watch them going through life doing what they can to make their lives better for themselves and their families.

I look at the things they do for enjoyment, and I look at the things that they have to do in order to survive. And there are all kinds of people, and everybody has a different amount of stuff. Everybody’s in different economic circumstances. It’s just gotten harder for everybody because of this president and this administration, and yet these people are still out pounding, doing what they can. And they’re the ones still working, and they’re the ones being vilified.

Their insurance is being canceled. Their premiums are going up. They haven’t done anything. I mean, it’s a punishment for which there’s no behavior. They’re being punished simply because the country elected a socialist. They’re being punished because we’ve got an administration that thinks this country needs to find out what the rest of the world lives like. We’ve got an administration that thinks this country has not ever deserved its superpower status, that it’s somehow ill-gotten.

So now we’ve got an administration that thinks it’s time for everybody here to find out what it’s really like for everybody to live. And all the while, they’re being promised the moon — lower premiums, keep your doctor, endless job opportunity — and none of it’s true. It’s just getting demonstrably worse by the week. Those people all notice it now, or an increasing number do. You still have the phenomena, the low-information crowd. If you ever hear somebody interviewing them and talking to them, you just hope and pray they always remain a minority.

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