RUSH: I teased this, and it’s really not even worth a tease.

But I mentioned this in earlier quadrants, sectors, of the program. It’s an Associated Press story. It is one of the most ludicrous articles I’ve ever read, and I realize I’m thinking that more and more as I read AP stories and Drive-By Media. It’s gone now beyond business and all to just ludicrous, hapless, pathetic — which the Washington Post is becoming now. The New York Times has been there for a while.

I mean, in the real world, they live in a different world. This is Julie Pace and Jim Kuhnhenn and they alternate back and forth as White House stenographers for AP. Headline: “In Party’s Losses, Obama Sees an Opportunity.” Right. Now, when Republicans lose big in midterm elections, you ever remember a story talking about what a great opportunity it was for the sitting Republican president?

No, I didn’t think so.

I don’t, either. But here’s how this start starts out: “With his party soon to be out of power on Capitol Hill, White House officials say President Barack Obama feels liberated…” Liberated, ladies and gentlemen! Do you know why Obama feels liberated? He’s liberated by the prospect of not having to work with these Democrats that don’t support him anymore. (Gasp!)

All those Democrats that campaigned for reelection and didn’t want him around and didn’t want him to campaign for ’em and didn’t want them anywhere near them, he’s now liberated from them. He doesn’t have to deal with those losers anymore. He feels “liberated by the prospect of detaching himself from Democrats who saw little role for him in” the, campaign, and he’s looking forward to “exploring the opportunities… to strike deals with congressional Republicans.”

Really?

We are supposed to believe here that Obama now feels liberated ’cause he got rid of the Democrat dead weight, and he can now compromise with Republicans? And this is what he’s been wanting to do all along, but these mean, ungrateful Democrats in Congress were stopping him? That’s what this story tries to say! This story’s point is that there are new opportunities to get things done with Republicans, who appreciate Obama, and the Democrats didn’t.

The Democrats looked at him as an albatross around their necks. But now he can compromise with Republicans — which he’s been wanting to do all along — ’cause these mean, unappreciative Democrats are gone. That’s just the beginning of this story. “White House aides have also concluded the political landscape leaves Obama with little ability to help Democrats regain control of the Senate in 2016.”

Meaning… (laughing) “White House aides have also concluded the political landscape leaves Obama with little ability to help Democrats” means, screw you! Okay, you didn’t want me helping you in these elections? Well, then (raspberry) you when we get to 2016! That “gives the president even more freedom to concentrate on finding areas of compromise with” Republicans.

Why didn’t somebody think of this back in 2010?

Do you realize all the great things that could have been done if Obama would have just realized what a bunch of bad guys these Democrat buddies were? The Republicans were the ones we’ve been waiting for, folks! It’s the Republicans who are finally gonna be getting something done here. Obama can finally get rid of these albatross, worthless, derelict Democrats — and it only took six years.

Now, six years in, Obama has his real golden opportunity to really make a difference by compromising with the Republicans. So the AP — in one of the most ludicrous stories I’ve ever read — now hilariously says that Obama is gonna be compromising like mad in the next two years. And Julie Pace and Jim Kuhnhenn call themselves journalists. Now, hang on here. I know what you’re thinking, and I’m gonna get there.

Right here in the headline: “In Party’s Losses, Obama Sees an Opportunity.” To heck with what these two reporters wrote. I happen to think that’s true. I happen to think Obama does see an opportunity. You know why? Well, it just happens to be in the next story. “House GOP Split on How to Stop Obama Executive Amnesty,” and this is from the Weekly Standard. You want to know why Obama sees an opportunity?

‘Cause he’s seeing stories like this. Do you know that the Republicans — primarily in the House, because the new Republican Senate’s not in office ’til January. Do you know that the current continuing resolution that funds the government expires Democrat 11th? (My brother’s birthday, by the way, but the two have nothing to do with each other.)

Now, if I ran the Republican Party, and I had just skunked the Democrats, and I had just gotten more seats in the House and the Senate than I’ve had in 55,000 years, I’d say, “Okay, spending authority ends December 11th, and we get sworn in on January 5th or whatever it is. I’ll come up with a funding bill for three weeks. I’ll come up with a bill that funds the government three weeks, and then we get sworn in.

“And next January, we start on fixing this budget mess and stopping this continuing resolution crap, and we get back to responsible budgeting.” But that’s not what’s gonna happen, because this story points out that the Republican leadership wants to go ahead in this lame duck with the Democrats running the Senate. They want to come up with a budget bill that takes care of the entire rest of the fiscal year, which would be through next September the 30th.

In other words, the Republican Party leadership does not want to seize an opportunity in January to implement their budget thinking, their budget philosophy. It would be, to me as an outsider… I’m just telling you, “as an outsider,” and I must preface it with that caveat. To me, the sensible political thing to do would be to insist on a three-week funding bill which takes us to when the Republicans get sworn in and run all of Congress.

And then we budget so as to give ourselves opportunities to defund this part of Obamacare and defund that part, knowing he’s gonna veto it, but we still do it. We come up with the bills, we attach public opinion polls showing what percentage of the American people support us, and we’d send those bills up to Obama knowing he’s going to veto ’em.

We’d make him the obstructer. But what I’m seeing in this story is the Republicans don’t want to do that. They want to take care of 10 months of spending before December 11th. They want to fund the government with the Democrats running the Senate all the way through the end of the current fiscal year, which is September the 30th. I’ll explain this again.

“The federal government is currently funded through a continuing resolution that runs out at midnight on December 11.” Instead of just passing a continuing resolution that would keep the government funded until, say, February or mid-January, the House Republican leadership wants to pass a spending bill together with the Democrat-run Senate that would fund the entire 2015 fiscal year. So the Republican leadership wants to take away a very important tool available to them that they could use in stopping amnesty, for example.

He can do executive amnesty all day long, but if it isn’t paid for, it doesn’t happen. So you don’t pay for it in this little continuing resolution you put together for three weeks or a month. But if you’re gonna put together the rest of the year’s spending, it’s gonna include anything discretionary that Obama could allocate. That would also saddle the incoming Congress, which is gonna have two years before the next election. It’s gonna take one full year of the two years they have away from them.

If they go ahead and fully fund the government through the remainder of the fiscal year, then that means the new Congress would be saddled with a budget they had nothing to do with putting together, even though the incoming Congress will be more Republican and more conservative and certainly have many fewer Democrats. So this is probably why Obama has an AP story reflecting how excited he is to compromise with the Republicans.

Now, again a caveat. It’s a Weekly Standard story. Budgeting and this sort of thing, it’s their business, it’s not mine. And I don’t pretend that you could put me in, say, Boehner’s job and I could do it better. I’m not that kind of personality. What they do, it’s a business. They have a business of their own. There are certain things required in it to be successful, like any other business. It’s not civics 101 and all that sort of stuff.

But it still escapes me why what appears to me to be a really golden opportunity — I mean, the odds are the Republicans are gonna hold the House in 2016, but the odds are not guaranteed they’re gonna hold the Senate in 2016. They’re gonna be defending more seats, the Democrats are gonna be — it’s a presidential turnout year, hell, anything can happen. You got two years here to get started, A, in stopping Obama and turning this thing around. And the budget seems to me to be a crucial element in that in determining what you could deny Obama.

I mean, if you’re serious about repealing parts of Obamacare, if you’re serious about he’s not gonna get away with executive amnesty, the only tool they’ve got, power of the purse and they’re gonna throw that away? I don’t understand. (interruption) No, I don’t. You’re telling me I understand. What is it I understand that I don’t get? Go ahead. Say it. Nobody can hear you. Say it. (interruption) Are you telling me that you believe the current leadership still does not want to confront and oppose Obama because they’re afraid to oppose Obama because of the same old things? They’ll be charged with racism? Are you saying that still exists? (interruption) Well, okay, if you say the Republican leadership’s enemy was the Tea Party, not Obama. (interruption) Yeah, I understand that.

But I’ve also heard what Boehner and McConnell have said pretty forcefully about amnesty. You don’t think they mean it? (interruption) So you don’t think that they’re serious about to wanting stop amnesty, they want amnesty, Chamber of Commerce. Okay. Even knowing the reason they won is to go up there and stop all of this, they are gonna ignore that? That’s what you think? (interruption) Stupid voters, huh?

Okay. Let’s see here. “An aide to House appropriations chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky says the omnibus bill will likely come to the floor the week of December 8. ‘It is my chairmanÂ’s strong view that we need to complete this critical appropriations work, which is already months behind schedule, in order to “clear the decks” and get off to a running start in the next Congress.'”

Oh, I see, so what they want to do is get the budget out of the way so that they don’t have to deal with the budget in January. And that would mean they wouldn’t have to deal with Ted Cruz. If they do the budget and they got the whole budget for the remaining fiscal year all the way through the end of September, that means they can not have to deal with Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and these Tea Party upstarts, right? That’s what you’re thinking? (interruption) Wow. So even after being the beneficiaries of a massive landslide election that carried with it several mandates, you are of the impression they are simply going to ignore that? (interruption) Well, the Weekly Standard piece seems to indicate that. I don’t understand.

It would seem to me — and again, it’s not my business. I’m not saying it’s none of my business. I’m saying I’m not an expert in this stuff. I don’t know all the ins and outs they’re thinking about. But on the surface it doesn’t seem to make any sense to me to take this many tools out of your hands, this many weapons out of your hands. I mean, the Democrats have gotten away with funding this government a month at a time.