RUSH: This is Sunday’s This Week with Stephanopoulos and the roundtable discussion. Stephanopoulos says, “This is kind of pile-on time now for the president. I want to show some magazine covers this week as well. You see the New Yorker cover right there. The president is trying to, with a huge cell phone, trying to get HealthCare.gov working. Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, ‘Can Obama Reboot?’ And Forbes — this may be the most interesting one — Vladimir Putin comes up on top of Obama as the most powerful leader in the world. What do we make of this,” Jonathan Karl?
KARL: The turnaround’s been astounding. Think of where we are just a few weeks ago. The Republicans were blamed for a government shutdown that went on and on and it was all this, you know, “Are the Republicans doomed to, you know, extinction?” Poll numbers low and now it’s all… That’s over. The focus is on the president.
RUSH: Oh, no! And that’s exactly what Ted Cruz and the rest of us were saying two weeks ago when Jonathan Karl and all the media were saying the Republicans would be doomed forever by the shutdown. We were all saying, “Oh, no, it’s not gonna work out that way,” and now the 180 has happened, and every one of these people has turned out to be wrong. And Cruz and the boys were right. Move forward to sound bite number four. This is the same show, ABC News This Week during the roundtable. This is Peggy Noonan, columnist in the Wall Street Journal. And Stephanopoulos said, “So, Peggy, is all of this a lesson for the Tea Party?
NOONAN: I think something big may be coming. A lot of people may be cruising for a bruising here. Big difference between the Tea Party now and say ’64 and Goldwater or ’76 and Reagan, ’64 and ’76 Goldwater and Reagan both wanted to seize and control and win over the Republican Party. The Tea Party now shows signs of not wanting to win it, but of wanting to topple it over, wanting to do away with it. That is something new in our politics. It’s gonna get fought out over the next few years.
RUSH: Now, with all due respect here, I’m wondering if Peggy Noonan knows anybody in the Tea Party. I mean, if she’s actually sat down and talked with anybody in the Tea Party, because what the Tea Party will tell you is that they are exactly trying to wrest control of it. They are not trying to destroy it. The people who were trying to destroy anything are Peggy’s friends. The Republican establishment is trying to damage the Tea Party. That’s what’s happening, and of course the Tea Party knows it because they feel it. So obviously they’re fighting back.
The Tea Party wants to beat Democrats. The Republicans don’t look like they do, and that’s the big dividing line. I can tell you firsthand, the Tea Party wants to beat Democrats. They want to beat back Obamacare. They want to beat back some of this spending. They want to get rid of some of this debt. The Tea Party wants to fix things. The Tea Party knows that in order to do that, Democrats must lose. And that’s what the Tea Party wants.
The Tea Party can’t figure out why the Republicans don’t want the Democrats to lose. The Tea Party is scratching their heads collectively and saying, “What is it that makes the Republicans want us to lose and the Democrats win?” That’s what we don’t see. Face it, folks, admit it, we don’t see a Republican Party that seems focused on defeating Democrats. We see Republican after Republican after Republican without any problem trashing other Republicans like Cruz or Mike Lee or take your pick of ’em. But they never talk that way of Obama. They never talk that way of any other Democrat. The Tea Party wants to beat Democrats. The Tea Party wants to win. They don’t understand why the Republican Party doesn’t.
I said last hour, you know, talking about this stuff with the Dolphins and cohesion and unity in the locker room. I said, “The best thing in the world for cohesion is winning.” And that’s what’s missing from the Republican Party is there isn’t any winning. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be any plan to win. And when it looks like some Republicans might win, if they happen to be Tea Party Republicans then other Republicans get into gear and try to make sure that doesn’t happen.
So everybody in the Tea Party is scratching their heads, but I don’t know where this comes from that the Tea Party wants to destroy the Republican Party. They don’t. They just want to wrest control of it because they want to beat Democrats. I swear, it’s no more complex than that. The real curiosity here, and it’s a real curiosity. I mean, it’s a genuine stumbling block. It’s a real mystery. Why do the Republicans not want to win? ‘Cause it sure doesn’t seem like they do, does it?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Joe in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Hi. Great to have you.
CALLER: Wow, Rush, what an honor.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I’ve been with you a long, long time, probably around the same age as you. I’m smart because of you.
RUSH: (laughing) That’s good for you. Thank you.
CALLER: Listen, I was gonna ask you a couple questions but I’ll leave it at one quick one. You know, you say you’re right. We want to see fighters up there, and that’s why I appreciate the Tea Party and considering the fact that the media never gives us a fair shot, exchange of ideas, what about a dramatic strategy of just tuning them out, just completely let the unfriendly media go. Do not respond to them. Don’t give interviews. Don’t give face time, and when it comes to, like the last presidential election, it was so obvious, they’re an arm of the Democratic Party, so why —
RUSH: Look, I agree with you, but I’m gonna tell you that the inside the Beltway people think that they don’t have a prayer unless they do appear on the mainstream media and unless they’re liked on the mainstream. I’m telling you, they don’t think they have a chance. The media is everything, being liked, not being slimed, appearing on all those Sunday shows, you got to or you don’t have to chance, that’s the way they look at it. I’m like you, I don’t need ’em. There’s nothing to be gained. There’s literally nothing. I know that the mainstream media’s not interested in me looking good, they’re not interested in people knowing me for who I am. Why would I go there? It’s simple. I know that where you were going with this is why don’t the Republicans bring up some of these victims of Obamacare and put ’em on TV? The media wouldn’t like that.