RUSH: This foreign money business, you know, yesterday on this program I got rather serious about the president of the United States getting down in the gutter and accusing the Chamber of Commerce and Rove and all these other people of being corrupted by foreign money. I said this is the kind of thing, you know, leave that to Carville and Begala, leave that to the political hacks. It turns out the LA Times today, Tom Hamburger is the reporter. Headline: ‘Democratic strategist criticizes ‘foreign money’ campaign theme.’ This is Joe Trippi. Joe Trippi says, ‘Get on to talking about the issues.’ He disagrees with having Obama personally criticize the Chamber of Commerce. Trippi says, (paraphrasing) ‘From what I see, there’s no violation of the law here. Let some political hack consultant make the charge.’ That’s his quote. You’re on the cutting edge. That was my suggestion yesterday. Now, it’s weird to have a Democrat echo — he probably didn’t know I said it. If he did, he’s stealing.
”My reaction? Get on to talking about the issues. This is not going to do much. From what I see, there isn’t a violation of the law.’ Trippi said that it was not right to have the president personally involved in attacking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for receiving foreign money. ‘It would be better to have a hack consultant like me complain’ than having the president do so, he said.’ So Trippi is at least honestly assessed himself as a hack consultant, along with Carville and Begala. So the audio sound bites on this. Obama continues the foreign money lie. Last night in Washington, George Washington University — and this is also on the Organizing for America website, BarackObama.com — held a town hall meeting out there and they’re making a big deal out of this because he took a couple questions via Skype. Never before had a president ever taken questions from Skype. But they were really softball questions and they even embarrassed Obama they were such softballs.
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RUSH: One of these women on Skype asks Obama a question: ‘Can you tell people, what can we do to get people to turn out? Can we say, ‘Yes, we can,’ can we change that to, ‘Yes, we can, but we can’t do it all in 21 months?” And Obama was even embarrassed at that, but in a serious sense, this is a huge abuse of power, what he is doing here. The baseless allegations with the point being, ‘Well, you prove that you’re not taking foreign money.’ He kept it up last night during this town hall meeting he had.
OBAMA: What’s happening in this election is unprecedented because what we’re seeing partly as a consequence of a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United is the ability of special interests to mobilize millions of dollars from donors who are undisclosed to run negative ads at levels that are outspending, in some cases, the candidates themselves or the parties. We don’t know if it’s being paid for by oil companies who don’t like some of our environmental positions. We don’t know if they’re being run by banks who are frustrated by some of our financial positions. We don’t know if they’re being funded by foreign corporations, because they’re not disclosed.
RUSH: Now, this is in front of a stacked crowd on a webcast to supporters on his website. Now, this is unseemly. I guess it’s not surprising. He’s a leftist and authoritarian, narcissist and everything else. Everything that he’s accusing the Republicans of could be said about him and his party. While there’s no evidence, there’s nothing, all there is is a baseless charge that has been dreamed up in the White House by Axelrod, trotted out Sunday on Face the Nation to the disappointment of Bob Schieffer and most others in the State-Controlled Media, and they continue this, and now you have other Democrats, you know — this is not resonating with people. They’re about jobs, the recession, unemployment, the debt, the future. This is not resonating. People are starting to say, ‘Wait a minute, why can’t the Democrats run for reelection on your agenda? All we’re hearing in the news media is how you’re not getting credit for all of your achievements, you’re getting all these wonderful legislative victories, Obamacare, and your party is not willing to run on any of it.’
In fact, there are some Democrats, a couple of them now running ads saying they voted against Obamacare. But have you noticed no Democrat is running on the agenda that Obama has put forth or on any of the achievements. They’re not out there bragging. Walter Mondull, get this. This is why this is a weird day. Walter Mondull said that the big Democrat everybody wants to come campaign for ’em is Joe Bite Me. Now, I read this, I say, ‘This is the Twilight Zone.’ Nobody could be serious. They can’t be trying to convince us that every Democrat running for reelection wants Biden? They won’t even send Biden into Delaware to deal with Christine O’Donnell. So, folks, it’s weird out there. We continue on this theme. The Chamber has responded. Yesterday afternoon on Fox News, Megyn Kelly, she talked with Bruce Josten, who is the Chamber of Commerce executive VP. She said, ‘The vice president –‘ this is Joe Bite Me ‘– put it directly to you, saying, ‘I challenge the Chamber to tell us how much of the money they’re investing is from foreign sources. I challenge ’em. If I’m wrong I will stand corrected.’ What do you say to that?’
JOSTEN: The administration is acting out of desperation, choosing not to run on a campaign running up to the elections on their accomplishments and instead —
RUSH: Right.
JOSTEN: — it seems to have gone from a campaign of hope and change to fear and smear. Look, we’ve been around nearly a hundred years, we know what the federal laws are, we are audited annually, we comply rigorously with all federal laws. This begins with a liberal blog, a subset of John Podesta, who interestingly was largely funded as a startup by George Soros and doesn’t divulge its own donors, and the administration didn’t even disclose all of its donors in the ’08 election cycle in the run-up to the campaign. So this is changing the subject because they don’t want to talk about their legislative accomplishments.
RUSH: Right. So Megyn Kelly said, ‘Then why don’t you just go ahead and disclose the names of all your donors?’
JOSTEN: What they want is us to divulge, yes, who our contributors are. Why? What we saw last year, Megyn, when some of the contributors to our health care issue ads got out in the public domain, is they were confronted by MoveOn, SEIU, and others with protests at the corporate headquarters, threats and intimidation and harassment against them, on and on and on. So much like we’ve seen out in California when ballot initiatives supporters’ names become public, threats, harassment, and intimidation then becomes the norm. This has little to do with speech.
RUSH: So that’s Bruce Josten, who is the Chamber of Commerce executive vice president of government affairs. And he’s right. We release the donors and union thugs will show up on the front yard, and Podesta will organize a bunch of other protests. And the intimidation will begin. So they’re not letting up on this, and even Democrats are starting to wonder, ‘What in the world are they trying to accomplish here?’ This is not going to turn up or gin up turnout. The theory many people have is that going negative like this will energize the Democrat base, which is now pretty dead. Negative advertising, gin up the base: ‘Oh, really? Foreign money? Really? Ho. Well, we’re gonna go vote then, Mabel.’ It’s not gonna work that way. They can’t run on their agenda; they refuse to run on their agenda. And, by the way, you know, I keep going back to the conversation I had with a ranking Republican last week. I’ve talked to more Republicans and they fully expect Obama after this election to move to the center. They expect a Clinton-like triangulation, a move to the center on the theory that he’ll have to do that to get reelected.
And I scratch my head. I heard this from another ranking Republican and I said, ‘If you believe this to be true, why didn’t he do that to get health care passed?’ After Scott Brown was elected, everybody said, ‘That’s it, health care is over, there’s not a prayer in the world. He doesn’t have 60 votes in the Senate.’ What did he do? He came back stronger than ever with Scott Brown in the Senate, and he didn’t try to get one Republican vote. He didn’t move in the Republicans’ direction. And this is a signature issue. And everybody knows, folks, that if he woulda just done two or three things he coulda peeled off three Republicans, he coulda gotten Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins. There are some RINOs that were wanting to vote for this health care bill. All he had to do was just a couple of minor, little compromises, and he woulda had his bipartisan bill. He didn’t. Now, if he’s not willing to move to the center or to move to the Republicans to get something like that passed, I don’t know why they think he’s gonna moderate and move to the center to get reelected. There’s no evidence that he’s going to do that. If you look at his life, if you look at his past, if you find out what it is that inspires him and motivates him, it’s not anything that traditional US politicians can relate to.
So it’s going to be interesting to see. He’s doubling down now. You know, this business of foreign money, there’s a story in the New York Times saying that he expects the Republicans to move to him after this election. They’re going to have to go to where the power is, they’re going to have to move to him because they’re gonna then have the responsibility of governance. I’ll give you the exact quote. Only a narcissist could think the way he is thinking and do the things he is doing. So sit tight. Lots to do on this really, really weird day. Obama even promised to listen more, you know, after the Brown victory, he promised to listen more. He’s constitutionally, I’m talking about his own constitution, he’s incapable of moving to the center or moving to the right, incapable of it, ain’t going to happen.
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RUSH: Youngstown, Ohio. This is Mary. I’m glad you called. It’s great to have you on the program.
CALLER: And what an honor it is for me, too. I do have to say real quick, hello from a congressional district that has in, I don’t know how many decades, an incumbent Democrat Tim Ryan fearing for his seat from a gentleman that’s never even been in the world of politics, so we’re very proud and hoping for the best here.
RUSH: Well, I think it’s going to happen. If you look throughout the state of Ohio, Obama’s approval numbers in Ohio are plummeting.
CALLER: Oh, yes.
RUSH: So it’s entirely likely that this sweep could be huge. It could be bigger than even some of the most optimistic forecasts. We’ll just have to see.
CALLER: We’re hoping. And real quick, too, I hope you don’t mind, I have to say three hellos to a real good friend of mine Andrea, my daughter who is a sophomore at college who joined a Republican group there, and my son who is a sophomore in high school, and that school truly comes to him whenever some kind of misinformation about Republicans and conservatism is expressed in the classroom, he’s the first one to raise his hand and remark on the truth on it and put everybody straight. I’m very proud of both of them for not being misled.
RUSH: What about your husband?
CALLER: Him, too. Very much conservative and married 27 years —
RUSH: Very good.
CALLER: — and a great supporter.
RUSH: You gotta include all the important people here.
CALLER: Yes, we do. And I want to throw that back at you also. I thank you, too, for keeping us straight out there.
RUSH: Thank you. I’m happy to be on your list.
CALLER: What I wanted to talk about was your discussion regarding the reason why the Republican Party is hesitant to release their name of donors due to the fact they’re concerned that they will be on a hit list of protests and such and repercussions where they shouldn’t be. I mean this is their God-given American right to do this. Proof of that is, again, here in Youngstown. The president of our local Chamber of Commerce is supportive of the Republican gubernatorial race, and he had a fundraiser dinner at his private residence. This has hit the news, how horrible this is, how they put the Chamber of Commerce in a bad situation, how they put our whole Youngstown Mahoning Valley bad situation, and it’s a situation that this is his right to do this. He did not use the Chamber. I’m a member of the Chamber. I personally didn’t get an invite to this. And if I didn’t, well, that tells you everything.
RUSH: This is exactly the point.
CALLER: The point is this. This is his right to do this. And these Democrats are attacking him on the radio and in the newspaper for him doing what is his First Amendment right to do.
RUSH: The point here is that all of the — you’re right, all of these people, if their names are divulged they just become targets. That’s the only reason the Democrats are demanding these names so they can send Thug, Inc., to intimidate them and try to make life miserable for them so that they don’t do it again. The Democrats can’t win anything on policy. They can’t win a thing on policy. They can’t campaign with one shred of honesty about their agenda. And now look. They’ve had remarkable achievements from their perspective, and they can’t run on them. They cannot say, ‘Look what we did. You need to reelect us.’ The exact opposite. Never before in my life has one political party been structured in such a way that its success is entirely based on governing against the will of the people. But that’s the modern Democrat Party.