RUSH: Let me get this straight. Mitt Romney wants to go back to the days when the media you saw last night was all we had. Those were the good old days, right?

Greetings, my friends. Great to have you here. Rush Limbaugh and the Rush Limbaugh program here on the EIB Network, the most listened to radio talk show in the country. Thrill and a delight to have you here. The telephone number if you want to be on the program’s 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

Before the debate started we had CNBC on in the house, a bunch of people were watching, and it was inane listening to the CNBC predebate roundtable discuss what was coming. It was literally insane or inane, it was pointless, it was just chatterbox chatter. I hadn’t paid much attention to this debate before last night. I had to be reminded last week this debate was even happening. Frankly, I’m into the World Series ’cause my team, the Royals, are in it. This debate was not on my radar until yesterday, actually, so it wasn’t until yesterday that I knew who the moderators of this thing were.

I’m gonna tell you, folks, when I saw John Harwood’s name on the moderator list, I knew that we were headed for one of the most biased nights that we were going to see, because if there’s anybody openly and willing to act as though he is in the Hillary camp, it is John Harwood, New York Times, former Wall Street Journal, now CNBC. The display that we got last night was a culmination of everything that many of us have been trying to tell the American people the Drive-By Media is: Arrogant, smug. I mean, it goes so far beyond bias.

Bias doesn’t even cover what happened last night. That was a kill show last night. That show was designed to kill every one of those candidates. That debate last night was designed to take them all out. That debate last night was to grease the skids for Hillary Clinton. That was the sole purpose of that debate last night. And the smugness and the arrogance and the condescension with which those moderators went about it finally came back and bit them to the point that everybody watching that debate, everybody, even other Drive-By Media types saw what was going on.

You can count on one hand the number of Drive-By Media types defending what happened last night on CNBC, and one of them doesn’t even really count because his mind was lost long ago, and that’s Chris Matthews. So you can count on four fingers the number of Drive-Bys that are actually defending. Ron Fournier even last night said that what happened, the mainstream media is getting beat up today, and we deserve it, he said. And he’s exactly right.

I want to take you back, before we get into debate analysis, because I started fuming with that very first question: Please tell us what is your biggest weakness. Right then you knew the table was set, you knew what was coming. And it ticked me off that some of our people even deigned to answer it. The whole premise behind that question is, tell us why you’re not qualified. And if there was a theme to this debate last night from these moderators, it was to expose the fact that these fine people, any one of which would be preferable to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, is not qualified.

And it bugs me and it has me fuming, this automatic assumption that any Democrat, the architects of the current economic disaster, the people with the only fingerprints on this economic disaster — well, at least for the first five years. The Democrat Party, when you talk about Obamacare, there aren’t any Republican fingerprints. We have 94 million Americans not working. We have half the country making less than $30,000 a year, and these people, these moderators, attempted to say that the people seeking the presidency on that stage last night are not qualified? Coupled with the automatic assumption that Hillary Clinton is qualified, that Barack Obama is qualified, that Joe Biden or whoever else on the Democrat side is, offends me and it has offended me my entire life. But I want to take you back to this very program, all the way back to April 14th, where I issued a warning to the RNC and Republican candidates.

RUSH ARCHIVE: When Good Morning America calls you, understand it’s not Good Morning America, it’s the Hillary Clinton campaign calling you because George Stephanopoulos is at Good Morning America and where he really works is the Hillary campaign, or the Bill Clinton war room. You would no more accept invitation to be interviewed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign consultant, so why would you accept an invitation to be interviewed by Hillary’s campaign consultant disguised as an anchor on Good Morning America? And the same thing goes for whoever it is that moderates these debates that are yet to happen.

If the Republicans fall for this business of letting Clinton campaign operatives moderate their debates we’re told that, “Rush, look, that’s the lay of the land, everybody knows it, and it’s an obstacle the Republicans have, it’s a reality that the Democrats don’t. And everybody knows it, and therefore the Republicans have to prove they can overcome this unfairness.” Really? Why is that case? It’s apparently been required of the Republicans for 35 years that they demonstrate they’re willing to deal with this unfairness. It seems like they’ve demonstrated for a number of decades they’re willing to do it. The point is it doesn’t seem to help them much. It remains an obstacle that has to be overcome. I know, it’s a challenging exercise to come up with alternative means here of reaching the American people. But one of the ways, this is a great field of candidacies that the Republicans have who can reach the American people by going over the heads of the media, and they should not be afraid to do so.

RUSH: Yet the RNC schedules these debates, and they schedule these debates with the very enemies of the Republicans. We all know, everybody knows, they are the enemy. They’re not just the media. They are the enemy, and yet the scheduling continues. And we all know why. The Republican Party, inside the Beltway, the establishment, whatever you want to call it, thinks they have to bend over backward to prove their fairness, that they are not all of these things they’re alleged to be.

So they take every option, every opportunity to try show these people, “No you don’t understand. We’re not racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes.” There’s no changing their minds. These moderators last night didn’t care a whit what these candidates think of anything. You could tell that by virtue of the questions. They didn’t have any interest whatsoever in what these candidates thought. The only objective they had was to take them out. From top to bottom, the objective here was to take these candidates out, to impugn them, to discredit them, to destroy them, whatever it took in the eyes of the public to ruin their reputations, to mock them, to mischaracterize them. That was the sole purpose.

But it’s not just last night where this happens. This happens every day. The media needs to be removed from the equation here. Everybody knows that. But how do you do it? One of the great issues of our time is how to counteract the damage inflicted by a corrupt media which is aligned with the Democrat Party. We have serious issues facing this country, and we do not, in not enough sectors of our party do we acknowledge the full scope of our enemy.

Ted Cruz last night — oh, and, by the way, wait ’til you hear the audio sound bites as they roll off today. All the Drive-By Media people: “Whoa, whoa, did you see Ted Cruz? Boy, everybody better keep their eye on Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is the dark horse. Ted Cruz is the guy you better keep your eye on.” Where have you been hearing that, folks? Ted Cruz finally had his fill of it. You have to ask yourself, if Cruz had not done what he did, would any of the other candidates have spoken up as forcefully?

I don’t think so. Because I think there’s this built-in fear of going against the media because the criticism is, “You mean you can’t handle questions from the media and you want to be president of the United States? Come on! You can’t be serious. You need to toughen up.” And that’s the wrong way to look at this because we’re not dealing with tough questions here. We’re not dealing with challenging questions here. We’re dealing with assassins. We’re dealing with character assassins. We’re dealing with career assassins.

That’s who the media is today vis-a-vis the Republican Party, and it doesn’t matter. You can have all the nice guys in the world, the Mitt Romneys and whatever. You’re not gonna change their mind. You can have all of the pliant, cross-the-aisle, “I want to work with you. I want to cooperate with you! We want to work together to get things done.” You can have all the Republicans in the world, and all you’re gonna get is mocked and laughed at when you fall for the trick and try to sidle up to the media and the Democrat Party that way.

They just privately laugh at you and talk about how they have you wrapped around their little finger. You can’t impress them. You can’t dazzle them. You can’t change their minds about you, because they don’t care to like you. They don’t care to have you on their side. They’re sole mission is to destroy you because of their quest for power, which is what this is all about. That’s what politics is all about is power, and they make no bones about it, and they don’t care how it is they acquire it.

If they have to tell a lie about Mitt Romney not paying his taxes for ten years, if they have to tell a lie about Mitt Romney essentially letting an employee’s wife die — he didn’t care about it because there was no health care — they don’t care. They don’t. There’s nothing that stops them because they know they’re never gonna be called on it. Hillary Clinton’s never gonna have her campaign or her existence characterized as “cartoonish.” She is never going to have her criminal past and her husband’s criminal past called up and have people reminded of it.

It’s gonna be glossed over and in fact marveled at: How clever the Clintons are at combining all the things that they do to get where they go. But it’s not even that. It’s just they’re all of the same mind, folks. They’re all of the same mind-set. They are all extremist leftists. Some of them are disguised as elected officials. Some of them disguised as candidates. Some of them disguised as journalists. Some of them are disguised as think-tank specialists. Some of them disguised as people that run nonprofits. Some of them disguised as college professors.

Some of them disguised as CEOs.

But they’re all leftists, and that is the most important thing in their life is their ideology and advancing their agenda. We are their biggest enemy, foreign and domestic. We — conservatives specifically, Republicans secondly — are their biggest enemy. And so we faced another hit squad last night, and they were finally called out on it. Did you notice that not one of them seemed to be bothered by it? Did you notice Harwood? Nothing but smirk and smile. Becky Quick? Smirk and smile. Carl Quintanilla? Smirk and smile.

They didn’t care. To them, today it’s mission accomplished. A, everybody’s talking about them. B, when they talk among themselves they’re congratulating themselves for actually characterizing Trump as a cartoon character, Ben Carson as being stupid and shallow, and on down the list. They think mission accomplished! Don’t doubt me on this. They’re not feeling chagrined. They’re not embarrassed. All the Drive-Bys on TV that you see — and there are many of them — condemning what they saw last night?

That’s for show.

This is not gonna cause one iota’s change in the media as for how they affect and treat Republicans. It isn’t gonna change a thing. That’s why Republicans are now compelled to continue the behavior that they began last night. It is not a negative after what everybody saw last night. It’s not whining, it’s not complaining to now consider the media as part of the opposition. It’s not childish. As I say, it’s not whining; it’s not complaining. That debate last night exposed every fatal flaw of the media-moderated debate model.

One of the great issues of our time — and it’s now more pressing than it’s ever been — is how to counteract the daily damage inflicted by a corrupt media — who, again, are simply disguised. They are truly Democrat Party activists. We have an existential threat to our country, to the constitutional republic that is America. And it is a mistake for Republicans to ask these people, these leftist political hacks, to conduct inquisitions of them, called debates.

It’s kind of laughable for the RNC, which scheduled this whole thing, to at the end of the night run around talking about how horrible it was. But I’m just telling you, these people are loving every minute of the expressed outrage by conservatives, both general public and elected officials, Republicans, you name it. Privately, they’re rubbing their hands together. Mission accomplished! They don’t know shame. They don’t know humiliation. It’s just one night, folks. They have the rest of the campaign to get this job done. (interruption)

No, they’re not disturbed, because the other Drive-Bys are just giving lip service. The other Drive-Bys are not really upset. If the other Drive-Bys are upset by anything, it’s that these people last night made it too obvious. They weren’t subtle enough. The Drive-Bys who were not on that stage last night are probably huddling together saying, “Look, the next debate we can’t let these clowns at CNBC do it. They were too up front. We gotta be more subtle as we set out to destroy the GOP.

“We can’t have it obvious that’s what-we’re doing. I mean, hell, that thing last night is even gonna convince the low-information voters that we’re a bunch of creeps!” That’s what they’re worried about. They’re not… They’re not shamed. I’m trying to express this in any number of ways since the program began.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It’s funny. Mr. Snerdley still can’t believe that the rest of the Drive-Bys are not gonna be embarrassed and humiliated over what happened on CNBC. Let me ask you, were they embarrassed over what Dan Rather and Mary Mapes did? Did that bother ’em? They scheduled an award dinner and they gave Dan Rather a newly invented journalism award. They circled the wagons to protect the brand, to protect the industry, but they certainly didn’t cave and change, apologize or anything of the sort.

They’re not worried. Damage control would be the max. But they’re not humiliated. They don’t think they’ve been exposed or anything. They don’t think this way. These people think of themselves every day they are constant winners. They have the power, solely and alone, they have the power. Nothing can knock them off of it. They are aligned with the Democrat Party. They are the most powerful political organization in the world, in their minds, and there’s nothing a little debate last night’s gonna do to change that. I’m talking about their attitude.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s a montage of some of these gotcha attack questions last night from the debate.

JOHN HARWOOD: (echo) Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?

CARL QUINTANILLA: You want to bring 70,000 pages to three? Is that (crosstalk) using really small type? You’ve been a young man in a hurry ever since you won your first election in your 20s. Why not slow down, get a few more things done first or least finish what you start?

BECKY QUICK: Ms. Fiorina, your board fired you. I just wondered why you think we should hire you now?

BECKY QUICK: Bankruptcy is a broken promise. Why should the voters believe the promises that you’re telling them right now?

BECKY QUICK: Senator Rubio, you’ve had issues. You have a lack of bookkeeping skills. You accidentally inter-mingled campaign money with your personal money. It raises the question whether you have the maturity and the wisdom to lead a $17 trillion economy.

CARL QUINTANILLA: Why would you serve on a company whose policies seem to run counter to your views on homosexuality? A company called Mannatech, with which you had a 10-year relationship. They paid $7 million to settle a deceptive marketing lawsuit in Texas, and yet you’re involvement continued. Why?

JOHN HARWOOD: Mr. Trump says that he is capable of growing the economy so much that Social Security and Medicare don’t have to be touched. Do you want to explain how that’s going to happen, Mr. Trump?

JOHN HARWOOD: The leading Republican candidate when you look at the average of national polls right now, is Donald Trump. When you look at him, do you see someone with the moral authority to unite the country? (audience boos)

TRUMP: Such a nasty question.

RUSH: Yeah. Well, it’s all nasty, and it’s all based on the desire to destroy these people. There wasn’t any attempt to get any understanding, to learn what they stand for or what their policies are. It’s laughable. It’s even… It’s a joke to even mention that as a possibility. This was a kill show last night. Those questions were not just biased. Those questions were not just fair. Those were perfectly structured, mean-spirited bombs. The questions themselves did not require any answers. The questions themselves were designed to be what shaped public opinion in that debate.

The questions themselves, the moderators, the assassins were attempting to characterize our candidates, and it didn’t matter what our candidates said. That was the purpose of those questions. There is no doubt about this. The day ought to come where we stop giving them this opportunity. They’re going to take it anyway. Whether it’s a debate format or the nightly news, they’re gonna do these kind of things. Our people need to focus and spend most of their time on creating a bond with the American people, like Carson and Trump have done.

That’s how you blunt this stuff. You don’t blunt this stuff by taking these people on and getting into a shouting match with ’em and telling them how they’re rude, although that was a good line from Christie. To Harwood, “You know, John, what you’re doing even in New Jersey would be called rude.” It was a great line. But let’s contrast this montage you just heard. Let’s go back and listen to Anderson Cooper and Dana Bash and Juan Carlos Lopez ask questions of the Democrats in their last debate.

ANDERSON COOPER: Secretary Clinton, though, with all due respect…

ANDERSON COOPER: Senator Sanders, you call yourself a Democratic socialist. How can any kind of socialist win a general election?

ANDERSON COOPER: We’re going to have a lot more on these issues. But I do want to just quickly get everybody in on the question of electability.

ANDERSON COOPER: Secretary Clinton, is Bernie Sanders tough enough on guns?

ANDERSON COOPER: Senator Sanders, what would you do differently?

ANDERSON COOPER: Is she too quick to use military force?

ANDERSON COOPER: Senator Sanders, I want you to be able to respond.

ANDERSON COOPER: Who or what is the greatest national security threat?

ANDERSON COOPER: Secretary Clinton, with all due respect, do you want to respond?

ANDERSON COOPER: Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?

ANDERSON COOPER: Secretary Clinton, what would you do for African-Americans in this country that President Obama couldn’t?

ANDERSON COOPER: Senator Sanders, what are you going to be able to do that President Obama didn’t?

ANDERSON COOPER: Secretary Clinton, how would you address this issue?

ANDERSON COOPER: Why is your plan better?

DANA BASH: Is that something that you would support?

JUAN CARLOS LOPEZ: Secretary Clinton, Governor O’Malley wants to open up Obamacare to millions of undocumented immigrants and their children. Do you?

ANDERSON COOPER: Secretary Clinton, do you regret your vote on the Patriot Act?

ANDERSON COOPER: Governor Chafee, Edward Snowden, is he a traitor or a hero?

ANDERSON COOPER: Governor O’Malley, how would you be different than President Obama’s administration?

ANDERSON COOPER: Secretary Clinton, how would you not be a third term of President Obama?

ANDERSON COOPER: Why should Democrats embrace an insider like yourself?

ANDERSON COOPER: Senator Sanders, are you tougher on climate change than Secretary Clinton?

ANDERSON COOPER: Secretary Clinton, do you regret your vote on the Patriot Act?

ANDERSON COOPER: Governor Chafee, Edward Snowden, is he a traitor or a hero?

ANDERSON COOPER: Governor O’Malley, how would you be different than President Obama’s administration?

ANDERSON COOPER: Secretary Clinton, how would you not be a third term of President Obama?

ANDERSON COOPER: Why should Democrats embrace an insider like yourself?

ANDERSON COOPER: Senator Sanders, are you tougher on climate change than Secretary Clinton?

RUSH: There wasn’t one gotcha. There wasn’t one question that even got near whether or not these people are qualified. There aren’t any characterizing of these candidates as buffoonish or as cartoonish. There were no references to any of the negatives of any of these people. Mrs. Clinton didn’t get a question about her husband’s philandering. She didn’t get one question about her own questionable foundation with all of the dubious donations. The questions that happened on the e-mail discouraging were brushed over by Bernie Sanders.

This is what passes for tough questions of Democrats. What you just heard, that’s what passes as tough questions. That’s as much as they will ever face. This is as tough a questioning as any Democrat candidate will ever face. By the way, Frank Luntz said that he has never had in his focus group of these people with their dials recording their responses as they hear things, he’s never, never had anybody get anywhere near the territory that Ted Cruz got in audience approval when he finally got fed up with the line and nature of questioning last night and just tore into these assassins.

CRUZ: The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. (Applause) This is not a cage match. Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich, will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen? How about talking about the substantive issues people care about. (applause) And, Carl, I’m not finished yet. The contrast with the Democratic debate where every fawning question from the media was, which of you is more handsome and wise? The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense than every participant in the Democratic debate. That debate reflected a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. And nobody watching at home believes that any of the moderators has any intention of voting in a Republican primary. The questions that are being asked shouldn’t be trying to get people to tear into each other.

RUSH: Look, I agree, but that’s not what they were trying to do. They were trying to destroy each and every one of you, Senator Cruz, just with the question. They didn’t care what you did with it. They didn’t care what happened. They don’t even care that you tore into ’em. To them they got the questions asked, and nobody stopped ’em. Although it did change in tone after this eruption from Cruz. But they didn’t cake. They didn’t care what the answers were. They weren’t even trying to stoke interaction between the candidates. The questions alone were the bullets. The cameras and the microphones were the guns. And the questions were the bullets, and it didn’t matter after that. What happened after the question of very little practical interest, as far as the moderators, slash, assassins are concerned. Marco Rubio had a good contribution to all of this, too, when he described Hillary Clinton’s super PAC.

RUBIO: The Democrats have the ultimate super PAC. It’s called the mainstream media. (cheers and applause) And I’ll tell you why. Last week Hillary Clinton went before a committee, she admitted she had sent e-mails to her family saying, hey, this attack of Benghazi was caused by Al-Qaeda-like elements. She spent over a week telling the families of those victims and the American people that it was because of a video. And yet the mainstream media’s going around saying it was at greatest week in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It was the week that she got exposed as a liar. It was the week that she got exposed as a liar — (cheers and applause) but she has her super PAC helping her out, the American mainstream media.

RUSH: It’s so long overdue that these people would call out the media this way, this is what the voters, this is what we, this is what the American people have been begging for, asking for. Stand up to ’em, push back, fight back, don’t take it. And that’s why this resonated coast to coast. This even resonated with low-information voters. This resonated with people who’ve never believed that there really is media bias who are watching. This resonated with people all over the country in all demographics, what happened last night. The media is too arrogant to understand they’ve done themselves any damage, it’s not possible. And, by the way, how much more damage can they face? They’re losing audience, they’re losing pages, they’re losing advertising revenue, and they don’t care.

It doesn’t matter to the people that are on camera or use the computer to write their pieces. It does matter to their management, I guess. But if it weren’t for subsidies in some of these companies, cable subsidies, the way they work out, half these networks won’t even be on the air. Now, one thing about Cruz. Cruz is right here, the Democrat debate was a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Now, a lot of people, “The Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, who are they?” The Bolsheviks beat the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks succeeded in beating the Mensheviks because they took over the Russian news media with guns. That’s what Cruz’s reference — well, not guns, but he was referring to the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks as what we saw on stage at the Democrat debate.