RUSH: The Drive-By Media think they have done it, they have destroyed Christie. Now, you may be seeing polling data that shows in New Jersey Christie’s more people popular right now than he was before Bridgegate. Not so fast, folks. F. Chuck Todd. Here, grab the sound bite. Grab number four. F. Chuck Todd on the Today show today. The cohost Savannah Guthrie said, “Hey, Chuck, I want to look at the matchup. This is where you see the most profound impact when you look at how Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie match up a month ago versus today. What do we have, Chuck? What do we have?”
TODD: A month ago it was basically a dead even race, and that was his best asset, the idea that he’s the one Republican that can stop the big front-runner on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton. Now it’s a 13-point lead for her. All of a sudden Chris Christie is polling no better than any other generic Republican candidate, and because he already had problems with conservatives. If he doesn’t have electability on his side, this is how this bridge mess has had a real impact on his future.
RUSH: And they’ve done it. In their minds, they’ve done it. This was the objective. To hell with these polls that show Christie more popular in New Jersey or maybe even more popular all over the country. That doesn’t matter. The reason they went after Christie is because he was leading Hillary by two points, so it’s a statistical tie, margin of error. In two different polls he was leading Hillary in a presumptive presidential race. And after a week, maybe 10 days, of the Drive-Bys relentlessly hammering Christie on Bridgegate, they think they’ve done it now. They’ve taken him from a dead heat to down 13 versus Hillary. They think they’ve done it, folks. They think they have destroyed the only Republican who had even a slight chance of defeating Hillary. That’s what that sound bite means. F. Chuck could barely contain his happiness there, his joy.
But let’s continue because Savannah Guthrie said, “TIME Magazine is putting its new issue out this morning, and the cover, ‘Can Anyone Stop Hillary?'” See, they think they’ve done it, folks. TIME Magazine’s cover, “Can Anyone Stop Hillary?” And then she says to F. Chuck, “What do you think of the Benghazi Report, the Benghazi issue in general, what it does to her potential candidacy?”
TODD: We know what Republicans wanted to do. They want Benghazi to do to Hillary Clinton what this bridge mess is doing to Chris Christie right now. They want to have Benghazi undermine what was a fairly good four-year term for her as secretary of state. When you look at this cover and you ask that question and you say, “It’s the same thing that happened eight years ago: ‘Can anyone stop her?'” Yes. Her. It’s the Clintons. It’s them. It is not necessarily any candidate, any thing; it’s how they handle issues like this. It’s how they handle Benghazi. If she ever looks like she’s not being forthcoming or truthful, then all of a sudden all of her old problems show up.
RUSH: So, see? Benghazi’s not gonna hurt her ’cause she’s old. “What difference does it make now?” She’s been around for so long, people accept that the Clintons are liars, and all they do now is just examine, “How well are they lying?” and if they’re lying, “Okay, we’re all for ’em. But if their lies get a little shaky and embarrass us, then they might have problems.” Well, that’s what that means is they want to have Benghazi “undermine what was fairly good four-year term for her.”
“When you look at this cover and you ask that question and you say, ‘It’s the same thing that happened eight years ago: “Can anyone stop her?”‘ Yes. Her. It’s the Clintons. It’s them. It is not necessarily any candidate, any thing; it’s how they handle issues like this,” meaning: How well do they lie? And if they keep lying like we know the Clintons can lie, then nobody can stop her. So to them, it’s not that the Clintons are incompetent or do dangerous/bad things or end up involved in policy that get Americans killed.
No, no, no. That has nothing to do with it. How do they handle the aftermath of that? If they handle it well, if they lie well, then — like Hillary said, “What difference does it make now?” — there’s no stopping her. But if they look a little shaky when they’re lying, if they don’t end up being as good as they used to be when they lied, then that’s when they will lose. That’s what they believe.
So the form of the question is basically admitting, “We know the Clintons lie to you, and we know that they lie to us, but we love ’em because they are us, just like Obama’s us. We went to the same schools, we’re the same age, and we just marvel. You know, they made it. They’re just the best, and we love ’em, and if they keep doing things to make us love ’em, there nothing stopping ’em,” and that’s how it is, folks.
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RUSH: You heard F. Chuck Todd say a four-year term for Hillary, “a good four-year term,” and you’re sitting there, and you’re saying, “Good four-year term? Egypt? Arab Spring? The Russian ‘reset’? The loss of much of Central and South America to communism?” You’re thinking, “They say she’s had a good four-year term?” Folks, I’m trying… Look, that is not how Hillary or her husband…
Let’s talk Hillary. That’s not how she’s judged. The media… How to put this? It’s not hard. I don’t mean it’s hard to understand. It’s challenging to explain it. Nothing’s real. Nothing is about substance with these people. In judging Hillary, it’s not whether she did a good job as secretary of state. It’s, how does she look when it’s all over? Is her reputation intact? Can we make the case that she did a good job?
Can we credibly say that? All that matters is the spin. Will the spin have credibility, I guess, is what I’m saying. That’s how they judge the Clintons. “Will the way we spin it positive to make ’em look good work?” and if it’ll work, then it’s a good four-year term. If they don’t think they can credibly spin incompetence into a good four-year term, then they’ll say she’s in trouble.
What F. Chuck Todd was telling you was (translated), “I don’t care what you think of what happened those four years. We can make ’em look good; ergo, she had a successful four-year term.” But wait. Four Americans died! “Doesn’t matter. If nobody’s worried about that, and if nobody’s gonna hold her responsible, then it’s no big deal.” It’s all about media. It’s all about spin. It’s all about buzz. It’s all about PR.
It isn’t about reality, and one of the things that makes that work is the low-information voter is totally informed by PR and buzz and spin. That’s what they believe to be true. The low-information voter will hear four Americans died in Benghazi, but then if the media’s not upset about it, if there’s not a whole lot of hearings, and if there isn’t any… This country, if anything, is prisoner now to crisis management PR and spin and buzz, and that’s the true test of media power.
That’s all F. Chuck Todd was saying. A “good four-year term” is defined by, “We can spin it that she was great secretary of state, and nobody’s laughing at us.” Well, except us, but we don’t count as far as they’re concerned. Look at Obama. Okay, the economy’s in the tank for five years, but he’s out there saying, “If you really work hard, you can get ahead. That’s what we want to restore.”
Well, that’s easy to spin. I mean, everybody believes that, right? If the president believes that eventually things are gonna get fixed, things will be fine, it’s just gonna take a little longer… That bothers me more than media bias. The media bias, it is what it is, and it’s been that way forever. What bothers me is I’m mayor of Realville — and the media, which is supposed to be the news of the day, is responsible for creating every day an artificial reality that is indeed artificial.
And yet, it’s rooted… This artificiality is what is real to the low-information voter, and that’s the real dangerous thing to me is people who think they know things. Not only are they dead wrong, they don’t know they’re being lied to. The things they know are not right but you’ll never convince them of that.
You know, I meant to take a call in these last two segments, but, gee, folks, I’ve been even impressing myself here. That’s why I didn’t.
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RUSH: Yeah, yeah, just a little question, just a little mental exercise. If… I don’t know. Let’s go back to 19′, say, ’88, ’89, ’90. If Bill Clinton had divorced Hillary and married Gennifer Flowers, would Gennifer Flowers be the Democrat front-runner for 2016? (laughing) Here’s another question for you — and seriously, can somebody tell me? I haven’t bothered to look it up. I’ve just explored this using my own memory.
Somebody tell me when or who or both.
When and who was the last Democrat front-runner to get the nomination? By front-runner, I mean presumed, like Hillary is now and like she was in 2008. It’s presumed that she gonna be the nominee, and presumed that she gonna be… Okay, LBJ. Sitting president, ’64. He was incumbent. How about FDR? Was FDR a front-runner before he won the first time? My point is, you have to go back a long time to find a Democrat front-runner who actually got the nomination.
It may be true of the Republicans, too, I don’t know. It may be a front-runner phenomenon, but specifically I’m asking it about the Democrats. ‘Cause all of this conventional wisdom is that it was gonna be Hillary in 2008, and isn’t it amazing? We’re right back there now, and we just had an audio sound bite: F. Chuck Todd and the Democrats think that they have taken Christie out.
They’ve got their polling data which shows Christie’s popularity’s rising in New Jersey and some other places. But in a head-to-head matchup with Hillary, in the same poll where they were tied or Christie was up a couple points, Christie is now down 13. It’s over. They think that they’ve succeeded in taking Christie out. We just played those sound bites for you. Let’s grab sound bite number six, Peter Beinart.
Last night on The Situation Room on CNN, Wolf Blitzer said, “You wrote a piece this week, Mr. Beinart, and a line from that article jumped out at me. You wrote, ‘The GOP today is an awful brand. [I]t’s crucial that the next Republican presidential nominee possess a personal brand that transcends his or her party’s. If a Republican wins in 2016, it will be because he or she wins over a significant number people who dislike the GOP.'”
Now, naturally that make Wolf get moist. You know, he started salivating. Wolf, it’s hard to contain him. He had to tighten the belt another notch. I mean, that kind of excitement… So he said to Beinart, “So, so, how does Christie fit into that?”
BEINART: Christie was by far the best person they had who could have done that. Christie had shown he had a reputation for bipartisanship. He had, on certain important issues like immigration and gay marriage, taken a position that was probably more palatable to the kind of voters that Republicans need to win, and he had a big personality. He didn’t just seem like the next Republican in line. And that’s why I think that his political wounding –I think it’s certain that he’s politically wounded — even if he survives, is really a danger for the Republican Party. I don’t see anyone who has the personal brand that can trump the party’s weakness in the way that Christie did.
RUSH: Man, is that not a mouthful? Does that not tell us everything we need to know? Here you have Peter Beinart, card-carrying leftist, card-carrying leftist, media-type professor. You name it, he fits all of it, and listen to what he said. “Christie had shown he had a reputation for bipartisanship.” He “was by far the best person” the Republicans had, who could have made people vote for him even though they don’t like Republicans.
You know, that’s exactly what the Republicans think, too.
That is how perverted and corrupt this has become. You’ve got people like Beinart who run around saying this kind of drivel, and the Republicans end up believing it. They end up thinking they’re hated. To the extent that they are, they do not understand why. It’s natural that Democrats wouldn’t like them. That’s not news, and that’s not a problem in politics, that people the other party don’t like you.
What’s new in politics is when your own party detests you, and that’s where the Republicans are, but that’s what they don’t get. So here you have this guy, this card-carrying liberal Democrat telling us who and what we need in order to win and that Christie was it until Bridgegate, because he had “a reputation for bipartisanship.” Hello, Bob Dole. Hello, McCain. Hello, Romney. Where did it get ’em? All right.
“He had, on certain important issues like immigration and gay marriage, taken a position that was probably more palatable to the kind of voters that Republicans need to win…” So, here we have a Democrat saying (translated), “What you Republicans need to do is support the same things that we Democrats do and then you will win.” That makes a lot of sense, does it not? If you’re gonna have a Republican that also supports gay marriage and amnesty, why would you need that Republican?
“Well, because that Republican, he could survive ’cause Democrats hate Republicans. If Democrat voters could like this guy, then it would come down to a personality contest, and if the Republican Party and Democrat candidates stand for the same thing…” That’s what Beinart is saying here. This is profound coming up. If, in the leftist view, the Democrat and Republican candidates believe in the same thing — in this case amnesty, bipartisanship, and gay marriage — then what will be the determination factor in who wins?
Personality, and that is where the media thinks that they can destroy any Republican. They destroyed Romney with his personality. They turned Romney — one of the gentlest, nicest souls you’ll ever meet — into a modern incarnation of Satan. They did. So what Beinart here is saying is, “You Republicans, you need to come up with a candidate who thinks exactly what we think, and then you’ll win it on the strength of personality.”
Right?
So in a personality contest, Hillary versus Christie, who do you think the media is going to engineer that victory for? It isn’t gonna be Christie. “Bully! Bull in a china shop! Uncouth, undisciplined.” I can hear it now. What Beinart and these guys all stealth-fully know is that if they can somehow convince the Republicans that the only way they can win is to start saying they are for and support the same policies Democrats do, they’re gonna kill the Republican Party.
Maybe it’s easier for us to see, folks, because we are far removed from it. But what a trick this is. This is the same trick, almost as good as convincing Republicans the only thing they have to do to win is get the independents, and thereby they get the Republicans campaigning for 20% of the vote. So, yeah, “Christie had shown he had a reputation bipartisanship.” He was “right” on amnesty and gay marriage, and those are the kind of issues that a Republican’s gonna have to start supporting if he’s gonna hope to win.
He had a big personality and he just didn’t seem like it was his turn. I mean, he was really the guy that was gonna earn it. He stood out in the crowd. But now, now with Bridgegate? I mean, even if he survives, it’s really a danger for the Republican Party. So what an amazing thing. The takeaway from this is this is exactly what I fear inside-the-Beltway Republicans also think. It’s what they’re doing. They’re talking about bipartisanship, amnesty, gay marriage, pot legalization, all of that.
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RUSH: Tom Brokaw, the dean, I guess, father, now the retired news anchor at NBC, he is scolding his media brethren for their fixation on Chris Christie. He says (paraphrasing), “Look, you guys, the country has moved on. They don’t care about this.” He was on their cable network on Wednesday, yesterday, and he warned his media colleagues about their excessive coverage of the Christie bridge controversy. He said, “I do think, across the country, however, when theyÂ’re looking at long-term unemployment, and theyÂ’re looking at the uncertainty of the Obamacare, theyÂ’re saying, ‘YouÂ’ve got to move on, guys.'”
We don’t care about Bridgegate. And what Brokaw’s buddies are saying, “Hey, Tom, we care about Hillary, and Bridgegate is how we’re taking Christie out.” And Brokaw says, “Oh, okay. Never mind. I hadn’t thought of that.” No, he didn’t say that. I’m making that up. He said, “You can only close those lanes for so long if you’re in the national media. I do wonder if this had happened in Nevada, whether it would have gotten much attention.”
Of course not. The only reason it got any attention is because Christie happens to be leading Hillary in the presidential poll for 2016. That’s it.
If Christie weren’t thinking of running, and if there was no poll that showed him beating Hillary, they wouldn’ta made a story about this. In fact, if there had been a story, it would have been one of those, “Man, look how much fun this is. Look at what these guys are doing to each other. That Christie shutting down those lanes to screw the Fort Lee mayor, isn’t this fun?” That would have been the reaction. But here they’re taking the guy out who is beating Hillary in these polls. That’s all is happening.
And F. Chuck Todd, let me go back and grab that sound bite, ’cause I’ve got some companion sound bites now. Now, here’s the story. This is First Read, NBC News. Headline: “Christie Cruising Through Bridge Scandal (So Far).” That’s the headline. It’s by Mark Murray, senior political editor, NBC News.
And here’s their story: “Nearly 70 percent of Americans say the bridge-closure scandal engulfing Chris Christie has not changed their opinion about the New Jersey governor, according to a new NBC News/Marist poll. In addition, 44 percent of respondents believe heÂ’s telling the truth about his knowledge of the events surrounding the controversy. And far more Americans view him as a strong leader rather than as a bully.”
So according to this NBC story, all of this hasn’t mattered. The Drive-Bys have thrown everything they’ve got at Christie, and he maybe is more popular in New Jersey than he was. He’s not looked at as a bully, and yet, F. Chuck Todd, same network, NBC, celebrating on the Today Show, because there’s one thing in the story I just shared with you that they didn’t discuss. F. Chuck did on the Today show.
TODD: A month ago it was basically a dead even race, and that was his best asset, the idea that he’s the one Republican that can stop the big front-runner on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton. Now it’s a 13-point lead for her. All of a sudden Chris Christie is polling no better than any other generic Republican candidate, and because he already had problems with conservatives. If he doesn’t have electability on his side, this is how this bridge mess has had a real impact on his future.
RUSH: And what F. Chuck again is saying: This is how we’ve done it. I don’t care if he’s more popular in New Jersey. I don’t care if more people look at him as a nice guy instead of a bully. We don’t care. We took him out against Hillary. I don’t care what else this poll shows. So we’re still able to do it. We had a guy that a week ago was beating Hillary by two points. After one week of us being on his case over this bridge thing, he’s down by 13. They’re celebrating. The hell with the rest of the poll. And that was the purpose. That’s why they did it.