RUSH: Okay, the three stools of Ronald Reagan: Defeat the communists. Check. Lower American taxes to revive the economy. Check. Rebuild the military. Check. Three things. Now, what’s Romney running on? Romney’s running on one thing, and he’d better change it. (interruption) No, he’s not doing that. He’s not running on, “I’m not Obama.” He’s running on the economy, and he’s gotta get tougher than that. He’s got to branch out. The economy speaks for itself.

But there’s also the question here: How many people really care about that? We’ve got three years. Nobody’s demanding this guy be thrown out? Well, other than us, but is there a national clamor? Folks, 30 or 40 years ago with the same identical economic circumstances, there would be such anger and outrage in this country that the incumbent wouldn’t even dare run again, and that’s not that long ago. So let’s do the three stools of Obama. Jobs? He doesn’t care. That checklist I went through from Victor Davis Hanson? That checklist, that is a long list of things you gotta do to maintain unemployment at 9%.

That is a long list of things, and Obama has done every one of them. It cannot be an accident. Now, there were a bunch of fundraisers for Romney over the weekend. Three of them, actually, were in the Hamptons. One was at David Koch’s place; one was at Ron Perelman’s place out on Long Island. A lot of former Obama donors showed up. The LA Times has story. Former Obama donors showed up, and the story’s about all the advice Romney’s getting. And I’m gonna tell you something.

This can be dealt with. Goodwin’s piece and the cultural divide and all that, I’m not saying it’s over. But Romney is gonna have to start treating Obama the same way he did Newt and Santorum, folks. He’s gonna have to do that. We are dealing with something new. Romney has got to realize that running a campaign on traditional American values is not enough, sad to say. That’s the hard, cold reality. Simply running around and telling people he’s gonna fix the economy isn’t enough.

What? What are you gonna do with the economy? Yeah, we all know it stinks. What are you gonna do? What’s the plan? (interruption) Okay, his economic plan has 59 points? Can you tell me three of them? (interruption) You can’t. Okay, so don’t tell me it’s 59 points. He may as well have zero if you can’t tell me what any of them are. Big whoop. It’s not enough to say you’re gonna repeal Obamacare, because there’s no accompanying talk from Republicans in Congress that have similar-type energy.

This has to be about Obama.

This campaign has to be about Obama, and Romney is gonna have to look at Obama the way he tarred Newt and the way he tarred Santorum. I don’t care whether he does it with his super PACs or whether he does it himself. But Obama’s not black. He’s not Martian. He’s not white. He is The Destructor, and he’s gotta be stopped in order for the country to be the country Romney thinks it is. This guy, I don’t care what his race is. It’s all about policy. It’s all about a program of economic destruction that cannot be an accident.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: There’s a website Seeking Alpha. I don’t know about it. Never heard of it, but they do have sourced material here. And the headline says it all: “Retail Sales Suffer From Loss Of Extended Unemployment Benefits.” Now, I submit to you we would never have seen thinking this way just 20 years ago, much less would we have reporting like this. We don’t see a story on retail sales affected by joblessness. No, we have a story on retail sales being affected by people no longer getting unemployment checks.

Now, my whole point in the last hour — I want to sum this up for Mitt Romney — and I hate to say this. It pains me to say this. I can’t tell you how sad it makes me, but I don’t care. Reality is reality, and the economy and its condition is not an automatic win-win for Romney or the Republicans right now. It just isn’t. Snerdley is looking at me with a expression of disbelief on his face, and I’m sure many of you are, too, because that’s so revolutionary. It was only back in 1992 where “It’s the economy, Stupid,” was the reason Clinton won. I’m here to tell you that the economy today is worse by factors of geometric proportion than it was in 1992. I had calls in 1992 from people saying, “It can’t get any worse, Rush.” I had guys that I played golf with at various clubs I belong to, educated, successful businessmen, Democrats telling me in 2004, “It can’t get any worse, Rush.”

Well, it’s worse by factors indescribable, and the same guys are still telling me that we gotta vote Democrat to fix it because it’s all Bush’s fault. The sad truth is — and the Romney people are gonna have to learn this right now — the sad truth is that employment is not pivotal. The unemployment rate, the jobs circumstance in this country is not pivotal and it’s not something Obama can lose the election on. Not by itself. It’s not something Romney can win. (interruption) What do you mean, how can I say that? I’ll tell you how I can say it. We have 48 million Americans, 47 million on food stamps, and the regime is advertising for more. We have 47, 48% who pay no income taxes.

We have three million more off the employment roles and on disability, and they all vote. What does it add up to? No jobs. No employment. No problem. And that’s no job, no employment, no pain for a whole heck of a lot of people whose expectations for themselves are not very high. You have food, you have a car, your cell phone, and a TV, and you’re set. Snerdley is shouting at me, “All those people can’t want to stay on food stamps.” Will you explain to me, then, why more people are getting on food stamps? (interruption) Exactly. What else do they have? There are no jobs. And yet they’re still eating. I’m not criticizing. I’m telling you it’s a new reality out there. This is something that’s been gnawing at me for over a year.

Every Thursday I come here with these unemployment numbers and my instincts have been telling me — and I’ve been fighting my instincts — my instincts have been telling me that nobody cares, because it’s not resulting in that much pain, not nearly as much as it used to. Not nearly the kind of pain that existed in 1992. When Bill Clinton runs for reelection “It’s the economy, Stupid.” Worst economy in 50 years was the campaign slogan. The economy today is worse by factors that you can’t even quantify. And it’s accepted. It’s seemingly accepted, because the so-called victims of the unemployment circumstance in this country are not suffering as unemployed people in the past did. And not that I want them to. It’s not even about what I want. I’m just dealing with the reality here.

Now we’ve got stories that retail sales are suffering because unemployment checks have ended. Not retail sales are off because of the jobs circumstance. Retail sales are off because the government isn’t giving people any money anymore. You couple all this with the way minds are wasted in the American education system today, the way they’re polluted, propagandized, whatever you want to say… (interruption) Yeah, that’s true. Clinton had a Perot out there helping him. Romney’s not gonna be helped by a Perot type. I’m just saying that there’s an architect of this circumstance, and he’s gotta be identified. His name’s Barack Obama. That long checklist of things I went through last hour that you have to do to ensure 9% unemployment is a long list of things. They can’t all be coincidental. They can’t all be accidental.

Obama has an economy that is almost as bad as Herbert Hoover’s economy. And I realize, what percentage of people in this country even know or care about Herbert freaking Hoover? So here I am drawing an analogy. “Herbert who, Rush?” All they know is he’s a Republican so he sucked. There’s a lot of stuff that we’re up against here, and my only point is relying on what traditionally has always worked is not gonna get it done. The polling data indicates it. Then there’s the other part of me. The other part of me says if the election were today, it would be a landslide with Obama sent out of town so fast, there would be a cloud of dust so thick he wouldn’t be seen in it. I still think that’s possible, probable. But during Herbert Hoover’s day there wasn’t any welfare. There wasn’t any relief. Most of that came in with FDR. And FDR still won, ran on how bad it was. Of course he did because with Hoover there were people jumping out of buildings.