RUSH: You know, I e-mail and sometimes I text. Of course with my new iPhone I don’t even text. I iMessage. In fact… Ah, if you don’t have an iPhone you’re not gonna know what I’m talking about. They got a new program on iPhone called iMessage, and it looks just like SMS, except it’s not SMS. It’s Apple’s own program. You’re not going through a phone company. No! It’s new on iOS 5. You’re not going through a phone company.

You’re going through Apple’s servers, Apple’s network — sometimes, you know, sometimes phone to phone — and you know it. If the text boxes are blue, you’re on iMessage. If it’s green, then you’re going through AT&T or whatever your phone company SMS is. It’s gotten to the point now if I’m texting somebody and their bubbles are green, screw it! You know, they’re old-fashioned; they’re not up to iMessage. They’re still using text so I don’t talk to ’em. My point is I don’t talk to anybody but I have been IMing and e-mailing back and forth a bunch of friends today and we’ve been talking about the debate and some other things, and I have to tell you something. You know, we’re all immersed — inescapably so because we pay attention to the media.

Note I didn’t say pay attention to “the news” because there isn’t any news anymore.

But when you are immersed in the media you are by definition immersed in pessimism and you are immersed in negativity. I’m sure that you recall my — well, not complaining or whining because I don’t do that, but I have let it be known that it’s bothered me. I’ve been surrounded so much negative, I can’t seem to “ex-scape” it. (That’s for those of us in Rio Linda.) So that debate last night, I have to tell you, I ended up happy. I had positive throughout this debate last night, and I know that some of the candidates had bad moments and at the same time they had stellar moments. But last night, I think it’s the best debate that there has been — from all perspectives. The moderators, the talent (i.e., the candidates). They were all up, they were all alive, they were all present, they were all aware.

You know, Michele Bachmann made Ron Paul illustrate that he’s wearing the tinfoil hat when it comes to American foreign policy. It was out there for everybody to see now. She did a fabulous job. I think every one of these people handled their questions, for the most part, well. Others, on other occasions, they got caught. There’s not much they could do. They did their best but there was some periods of time where various candidate was weak here, weak there. Like Newt was a little weak on the Freddie Mac assault; and Mitt was in trouble when Chris Wallace and Santorum dragged him through the flip-flops and the whole thing on abortion in Massachusetts. But even in the weak moments, I thought Romney had a great night. I think Romney had a great night.

Now, my friends are unhappy with me saying that. But I thought, on balance, even Romney had his stellar moments last night. The whole point of this is I came away with this: It’s not a two-man race; it’s a four-person race. It is. It’s a four-person race, and I came away more confident than that whoever it is of these four not only can they win, but they’re gonna be able to hold their own and then some against the Bamster in the debates; which I know that many people on our side are either paranoid about or they’re salivating over. They’re either paranoid that our people are gonna end up looking like idiots against Obama or they’re salivating over the fact that we’re gonna have somebody that’s gonna finally look smart, sound articulate and erudite and take that Obama advantage away.

Well, everybody is assuming it’s Mitt and Newt. Okay? True. It started as a two-man race. But now I think you throw Perry in there and I think Bachmann’s back. Yes, sir, I do! I think Perry, too — and don’t be surprised if I turn out to be right about this. My overall point — whether it’s a two-man race or four-man race, the point — that I really want to make here is I got the sense from watching this last night (and I see polling data: Obama’s at 43% in his reelect number now; forty-three percent in his reelect) I just have a more ebullient feeling about those four people I mentioned and their odds of not only bearing up well, holding up well, but even triumphing over Obama in debates.

For example, I’m sure many people, after watching this last night, said, “Oh, my gosh, look at what just happened! We just exposed Newt as being weak as he could be on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” Well, I gotta tell you something. So’s Obama. Obama doesn’t want to go there. So, if Newt’s the nominee, don’t worry. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, whatever, Obama doesn’t want to go there — and if Obama doesn’t want to go there, the media is not gonna take them there in the debates. Obama wants no part of Fannie or Freddie. Just like Chris Dodd wouldn’t want any part of it if he were the nominee, or Kerry. John Kerry (who served in Vietnam), the haughty John, wouldn’t want to be part of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, either.

Obama took more from Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae than anybody else is why he doesn’t want to go there. So they can sit there and they can talk about Newt and his $1.6 million. That’s chump change compared to what Obama and every other Democrat got out of that place! Michele Bachmann, strong as she could be, stood up there and said, “I am a serious candidate!” Perry was much better last night. Perry was cogent, laughing, smiling, energetic. Santorum was solid. Paul came off like the crazy uncle in the basement that everybody has in their family. I just… I don’t know. We’ll get into detail. I sent Cookie just some generic examples from the debate that I wanted to play these sound bites for you to go over all this with you, which we will do.

I know that the conventional wisdom here is that Romney has the best shot, a very good shot. But Santorum… I gotta throw him in there too. I don’t know if you could say it was a five-man race but he was great last night. Perry was great last night. Bachmann was great. My point is this is anything but over. There has not been a single vote cast yet, and once this is over, I’m confident that any of the candidates — four-man race, even if it’s five — can beat Obama. We’re gonna beat this guy, folks. It’s what I came away with last night: We are going to beat this guy, and we are going to have a reasonably good president in the process. I really think that that can happen here. I really do, and I think it’s just step one, as I’ve suggested. We need to do more than just stand up and say “Stop!” to the left. We have to do more than just try to defend. We have to start doing U-turn on some of this stuff.