RUSH: By the way, I just got a tweet here from a — well, I didn’t get the tweet, but somebody sent me a tweet from the national editor of The Daily Beast, a guy named Justin Miller, and he says forget about abortion, forget about same-sex marriage. That’s not where we’re headed with Kavanaugh. Contraception could be banned under Justice Kavanaugh.

They’re recycling the Stephanopoulos-Romney thing! You remember the Republican debate where Stephanopoulos out of the blue asked Romney if he thought states should have the right to ban contraception! Nobody was talking about it! And Romney said, “What, George, what are you talking about?”

And Stephanopoulos kept boring in. “Would you? Do you think states have the right to ban contraception?”

And Romney’s looking, “What the hell is this? George, nobody’s even thinking about this.”

“Do you think states –” And so Romney eventually answered it. And that is all it took. Once Romney answered the question, “Romney thinks states should be able to ban contraception.” So they’re recycling here. The Daily Beast guy, forget about abortion, forget about same-sex marriage, contraception could be banned.

This is how they went after Bork! They went after Bork on the fact that Bork didn’t believe in a right to privacy, which meant that you don’t have the right to use contraception. They’re going at abortion in a circuitous route without actually mentioning abortion or Roe v. Wade. They’re gonna attack Kavanaugh on health care, Obamacare, and now contraception. All of this is how they’re gonna get to abortion without mentioning it.

(interruption) Well, that’s the question. Mr. Snerdley says, “Does this guy at The Daily Beast, for example, really believe this? Or are they just saying it knowing that their brain-dead supporters will believe it?” And it’s not an easy answer. I think some of these people actually do believe this stuff.

We’re not talking about rational people. We are trying to analyze irrational people, people that have gone over the bend emotionally and psychologically over Trump’s victory. We’re trying to imagine and analyze them within the confines of our own rationality. And we can’t. Rationality and irrationality do not overlap. And so you’re asking me does this guy really believe it. The odds are he does! The odds are the people that say this stuff believe it.

When Pelosi says, “Civilization is at stake in the midterm election,” we sit here and say, “What a dolt. She can’t possibly believe it!” Except she actually might, folks. They’re not normal. My point has been for the last two, three years to anybody who would listen, we hear them say these things, like the reaction I just got when I shared the tweet from this guy at the Daily Beast. They started laughing their asses off in there, and then they started getting mad at the same time.

But the belief was, “That’s impossible.” They believe it. I have been trying to get people to understand they believe this stuff. We laugh at it, think how ridiculous, how absurd, nobody’s gonna think this is true. But I’m convinced that Stephanopoulos did damage Romney a bit with something totally made up! “Do you think states should have the right to ban contraception?” So clearly they have polled and focus grouped contraception.

And they’ve got people believing that Republicans want to deny it, want take it away from ’em because they think Republicans want women to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and then dressed up like The Handmaid’s Tale, milking cows and doing whatever they think women do when they’re oppressed.

That’s the world they’re trying to create for liberal women to believe. And you look at the ads they ran, Julia’s garden, that ad Obama ran with Julia, this imaginary character that lives in government housing and they give her a flower garden. It’s not so easy say, “Nah, they can’t possibly believe it.” I think they do.

Let me grab another call here quickly. Back to the phones. This is St. Louis, and it looks like Lissa. Great to have you on the program with us. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. Hi, Rush. Did you catch that protest last night in front of the Supreme Court?

RUSH: No, but I heard about it. I heard everything about it. I didn’t see it.

CALLER: It sounded like the Wellstone memorial. I mean, it was the screechiest, most grating, raspiest bunch of nonsense. It was a scream fest. I mean, you’d have to get a thesaurus out to come up with enough words to define how unpleasantly —

RUSH: Okay, let me ask you a couple questions about this. Is this the rally that Shannon Bream of Fox News said, “I can’t do my show here with this. I gotta go back to the safety of the studio,” because I remember she tweeted they had to abandon the steps of the Supreme Court because she felt too threatened. Is this the same thing you’re talking about here?

CALLER: Yes, it is.

RUSH: No. 2. Do you think — I want you to put yourself, I want you to pretend that you’re hosting a talk show today. You saw that last night. You just had your reaction. As you were watching it, do you have any fear that Americans watching it were buying into it and believing it?

CALLER: No. I have no fear. It was so over the top. There wasn’t a single person who actually spoke.

RUSH: Do you think it was counterproductive?

CALLER: Yes. I do. I think it was counterproductive. And I know you were just saying these liberal Democrats believe that, you know, the Supreme Court’s gonna take away their contraception. But I think it’s the boy who cried wolf too many times.

RUSH: Yeah. I have to make the point that since Bork, there hasn’t been a single change. It’s every nominee. It’s the same reaction to every nominee. And I’m like you; I think we’re in the beginning stages of it backfiring on them.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right. Grab sound bite number 28 and 29. We’re gonna go back. Here are the audio sound bites on this contraception crap that Stephanopoulos brought up. It was January 7, 2012, Manchester, New Hampshire, Saint Anselm College, live on ABC, Republican candidates primary debate. And they had a section on — I’m not sure it was on contraception ’cause this question came out of nowhere.

Stephanopoulos says, “Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception, or is that trumped up by a constitutional right to privacy?” Now, let me remind you of something. Some of you may not know it. This was the first trap that was set for Robert Bork. I wish I could remember the name of the case, but it was a Connecticut case that involved a couple in Connecticut.

And Bork was arguing in his hearings quite properly that the Constitution does not specify a right to privacy. You know, we all run around thinking we have a right to privacy, but constitutionally it’s only implied in the Fourth and Fifth amendments. The Fourth Amendment, you’re protected against unlawful searches and seizures, but the right to privacy, the words are not there.

So Bork was arguing this. And the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee were able to twist that into Bork obviously believing that a couple in Connecticut did not have the right to use contraception. That’s what it was, Griswold v. Connecticut. That’s the case, the first case that they used to trip up Bork by claiming that Bork didn’t believe that we had a right to privacy, and therefore we could be told that we’re not entitled to contraception.

The left has used this, ever since they succeeded in derailing Bork with this, they’ve always found a way to circle back to it because privacy and contraception, I mean, go hand in hand, and they also dovetail with abortion. And I think many of the Democrats today know — how many Republican judicial nominees have there been that the Democrats have said over the last 30 years are gonna destroy Roe v. Wade and they’re gonna take away abortion and it hasn’t happened?

Pelosi, “This is the end of civilization as we know it, millions of people will be losing their lives,” they’ve been saying this crap for 30 years. It’s kind of like the way started losing senior citizens back in the sixties, the seventies and eighties. The Democrats, every budget battle, accused the Republicans of wanting to take away Social Security from senior citizens. That was a constant. In every campaign, the Democrats would say the Republicans want to take away your Social Security.

Now, seasoned citizens scared to death that it might happen couldn’t take the chance, so they voted Democrat almost in lockstep. And then the Democrats said not only do Republicans want to take away your Social Security, they want to kick you out of your house. And of course the Republicans never reacted to any of this stuff other than saying, “This is silly. We’re not talking about taking anybody’s Social Security away.”

But seasoned citizens couldn’t take the risk. So they constantly voted Democrat. Then they kept hearing that the Republicans want to kick them out of their house. Well, after a number of years of this, with Republicans winning elections, they found out that nothing happened to Social Security. And then they found out that they weren’t being kicked out of their homes.

And so these constant Democrat allegations began to fade because they were not effective. They didn’t come true. I think the same thing is starting to happen now with abortion, contraception, and all this other stuff that the Democrats try to create panic over. Gorsuch hasn’t tried to take your right to an abortion aware of you, Scalia didn’t, nobody has. It hasn’t happened. The case hasn’t presented itself. Yet the Democrats keep claiming that every Republican judge is somehow gonna end life as we know it. And yet life has gone on, and it’s getting better.

So they’re circling back now to contraception because with contraception, with the fear that Republicans want to make sure women don’t get it. And look, I hate to mention this, but it’s a relevant fact. You would be amazed at how many young high school and college women have watched that stupid ass dumb show, The Handmaid’s Tale, and believe it.

Did you watch it, Dawn? Did you watch it with your daughters? (interruption) Okay. That’s right. But have they watched it? (interruption) She loved it but she knows it’s not true. Well, a lot of young women don’t know that it’s not true and a lot of young believe that that’s what Republicans have planned for ’em. They’re gonna be running around milking cows all day, assigned pregnancies, can’t get abortions, basically gonna be slaves!

It’s written by some lunatic. I’m not even gonna mention her name. But she’s got all kinds of books like this out there, and it’s being taught in feminist classes and women’s studies classes. So when these Democrats come out and start accusing Republicans of wanting to take away your contraception, there’s a significant number of young women panicking and believing it ’cause they saw a TV show about it. “There was a movie about there, there was a miniseries. I saw it on TV!” And of course nothing could be further from the truth.

So here’s how they did Romney in. And I’m convinced this as much as anything contributed to Romney losing the presidential election in 2012. Again, Stephanopoulos: “Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception, or is that right trumped by a constitutional right to privacy?”

ROMNEY: George, this is an unusual topic that you’re raising. States have right to ban contraception? I can’t imagine a state banning contraception. I can’t imagine the circumstances where a state would want to do so and if I were a governor of a state —

STEPHANOPOULOS: The Supreme Court had to rule on this back in 1965 because a state did.

ROMNEY: — or a legislature of a state, I would totally and completely oppose any effort to ban contraception. So you’re asking — given the fact that there’s no state that wants to do so, and I don’t know of any candidate that wants to do so, you’re asking could it constitutionally be done? We can ask our constitutionalist here. (laughter)

RUSH: Stephanopoulos tried to say the Supreme Court had to rule on this back in ’65 because a state did. That’s Griswold-Connecticut. That tripped up Bork. So Stephanopoulos says, “I’m asking you, do you believe states have that right or not?”

ROMNEY: George, I don’t know whether a state has the right to ban contraception. No state wants to. The idea of you putting forward things that states might want to do that no state wants to do and asking me whether they could do it or not is kind of a silly thing, I think.

RUSH: So the news Romney says states should have the right. Not Romney didn’t care, just get Romney on the record dealing with the possibility that contraception would be banned, and that’s all it took. And that was the only purpose of it. So now this clown at The Daily Beast, the national editor, Justin Miller, with a tweet, “Forget abortion, same-sex marriage. Contraception could be banned under Justice Kavanaugh.”

It’s absurd. There is nobody anywhere even talking about this. There’s nobody anywhere even thinking about this. But that doesn’t matter. I’m just prepping you for this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s the story about Democrat strategy on the Trump pick: unify around health care. This is TheHill.com: “The liberal base is fired up about abortion rights, but Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) will seek to emphasize access to affordable health care as much as Roe v. Wade,” in this confirmation fight.

“In sharp contrast to the Obama era, Schumer thinks health care is the Democrats’ best weapon. By putting the charged issue of women’s reproductive rights within the broader framework of access to health care,” i.e., contraception, “the matter is likely to be less polarizing in red states.”

Now, in truth, this shows you how dumb the Democrats think voters are. It is the height of chutzpah to call the right to kill unborn babies “access to health care.” And yet they think they’re gonna get away with it, because pregnancy is a disease. Yes, that unviable tissue mass is an illness, and women need access to whatever health care they want in order to treat this illness. So that’s how they’re gonna go about it. (interruption) Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. I wasn’t gonna mention that ’til you just did.

Michelle Wolf, you know what I don’t understand? Well, never mind. I can remember the days, Mr. Snerdley, half the people in media today wouldn’t have gotten hired just ’cause their voices stink. Folks, I am not kidding about this. It used to be — and I’m not a dinosaur, I’m not Jurassic Park myself. I’m not an old guy saying get off my lawn with this.

I’m just telling you that back in the what some would call the golden era of broadcasting where there weren’t 55,000 channels, there were certain qualifications you had to have, and one of them was a pleasing and distinctive voice, pleasing and distinctive.

That’s out the window now. I mean, that’s obviously not even thought of as a deterrent, qualification, asset, problem, or what have you. That’s why you can always recognize when you are listening to a young broadcaster just starting out. They were all what we were called “Ron Radios.” They practically vomited their words trying to sound like professional broadcasters. (imitation) “They’d talk just like this and do the weather forecast and the temperature is. And they just basically puke all over you with the constant perpetual smile,” and what they thought was a professional sounding voice.

You could recognize it, spot ’em a mile away. They’d eventually grow out of it or get fired. But now nobody even bothers to do Ron Radio anymore. If they got horrible voice they just got a horrible voice and they’re hired, it doesn’t matter. Can’t understand ’em, doesn’t matter, they get hired. (interruption) No, no, no. This is not sour grapes. I don’t care. I’m just pointing out changes and differences.

And what made me think of it was Michelle Wolf. For crying out loud, if there is a voice that makes you want to turn something off, it’s hers. But, yeah, she did a bit on her Netflix show, she’s a comedian where she’s dressed up in a one piece American flag swimsuit and high heels, and she’s got an Uncle Sam top hat, and she’s got a dancing bunch of guys behind her, and she’s singing about the virtues of abortion. “If you want one, get one,” throws some things out of the top hat or whatever.

It’s not funny. It’s kind of despicable. But she’s there on Netflix. If they think this stuff is drawing support, they’re wrong. It may be solidifying support among radical lunatic fringe groups, but I think the left is cracking. And precisely because all of this stuff hasn’t worked. And the evidence that it hasn’t worked was that Obama’s agenda has already been unraveled. Obama’s agenda didn’t satisfy nearly enough of the radical left in the first place. And Obama was Mr. Perfect.

If utopia was gonna happen or if the foundations for utopia were gonna be laid, it was gonna be during the Obama years. And nothing. And now where is he? “He must not have even really believed it because all he’s doing now is trying to get rich and make money off of our support, Mabel.” The biggest success they’ve got — and it’s a big one — the biggest success they have is the never-ending media support for what they do, say, think, and hope to achieve. That’s it.

But when you actually measure what they are succeeding or accomplishing, they will tell you the tale. They’re angry, fit to be tied, unhappy, because it isn’t working, and they’re faced with the reality every day that what they believe doesn’t work.