RUSH: Another teachable moment today. A veritable object lesson in how it is that the Republican Party continues to — I mean, for Mitch McConnell saying, there’s no way, I don’t care what anybody says, there’s not gonna be a government shutdown. Let me tell you something, folks. If you’re not willing to shut down the government in a fight to defund Planned Parenthood, they get — do you know how much — what did I see the other day, $2 billion, and they do not provide any health services that women cannot get anywhere else outside of the number of abortions that they provide.

But they don’t even do mammograms. They’re not a women’s health organization. It’s a front for what they are. But Mitch McConnell, trying to head off anybody that talks about a government shutdown in September, heading off the pass, no matter what there isn’t gonna be one, ’cause the Republicans still are afraid of themselves. They’re afraid of whatever they might say and do, and a government shutdown, they think it’d be the horrible, worst thing, of course everybody loves government, panics if the government gets shut down.
It’s getting tiresome.

It’s getting tiresome to have to, I don’t know, report this, pass this stuff on to you. It’s getting tiresome. And along the same lines an object lesson, Jeb Bush, in an innocent comment that happened to be right on the money about federal funding for women’s health issues, Hillary Clinton started squawking. And Jeb, within two hours, apologized and essentially asked for forgiveness and a chance to restate it.

And the Democrat media’s out there applauding Mrs. Clinton, “Way to go. Way for changing the subject. Way to take Jeb down. Way to go.” And there was no reason to apologize. He didn’t say anything wrong. He said something, in fact, that a lot of Republican voters believe.

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RUSH: Let’s just go to this object lesson here with Jeb Bush. The Washington Post has a story here that the latest in the aftermath of everything, and the headline is: “Jeb Bush’s Quick Turnabout on Women’s Health Funding, and What It Tells Us,” and it is by Janell Ross. It’s a textbook example of how the Drive-By Media works. It’s also a textbook example of why and how many Republican candidates are afraid of their own shadows.

Jeb said absolutely nothing wrong in his original comments, absolutely nothing wrong. But the Drive-Bys cherry-picked his comments and it didn’t matter that there’s no taking him out of context. They didn’t have to. What he said was not wrong. It made infinite sense. And I have to tell you something: I was kind of all excited. I was excited to be able to come here and say something positive about Jeb Bush.

I didn’t even get to it before they raked it over the coals and Jeb had to try to walk it back. But the Drive-Bys think that they can use Jeb’s remarks to give Hillary the moral high ground here on “women’s health” and “women’s rights” and “War on Women” and all of that. Janell Ross at the Washington Post says, “If nothing else … Jeb Bush’s quick turnabout on women’s health funding … is a testament to the power of social media. [B]y Tuesday afternoon, word went out via Twitter,” which is a sewer.

Well, I should say, Twitter has several sewers.

The whole thing may not be a sewer, but it’s got several sewers in it. I mean, the absolute dregs of human debris lurk there anonymously, and that’s just testament to the power of these people. This is the army of the great unwashed, the army of low-information voters sitting around tweeting all day. Anyway, “word went out via Twitter. Jeb Bush had told a group gathered at the Southern Baptist Convention that he was less than certain that ‘half a billion’ dollars was needed to cover ‘women’s health issues.'”

He thought we don’t need to be spending that kind of money, and here’s what Bush said at the Southern Baptist Convention. This is what got this ball rolling. He says, “The argument against this is, well, women’s health issues are going to be — you’re attacking, it’s a war on women, and you’re attacking women’s health issues. ‘You could take dollar for dollar — although I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues…” That was it. That is all: “[A]lthough I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues…”

He continued: “[B]ut if you took dollar for dollar, there are many extraordinarily fine organizations, community health organizations, that exist, federally-sponsored community health organizations, to provide quality care for women on a wide variety of health issues,’ he said. ‘But abortion should not be funded by the government.'” And for this, for what you just heard, Jeb Bush was taken to the woodshed, and the Twitter sewer did its bit along with the Drive-By Media.

Once the Drive-By Media got wind of what was happening on Twitter, they joined the party. And it was time to destroy Jeb, time to destroy Jeb for insensitivity, racism, sexism, bigotry, insensitivity to the plight of women. Even though Jeb said, I don’t know if we need to be spending all this money, and then he went on to praise all of the federal organizations that he just knows are there that are providing just wonderful health care for all of these women that are so denied it in this mean-spirited country.

Why, you would think that women cannot get health care in America even after Obamacare, even after the Affordable Care Act! But yet here’s Jeb Bush citing all of the federal programs and praising them, and it wasn’t enough, was it? Here’s crossing the aisle, folks. Here’s trying to compromise. Here’s working with the other side. Here is showing we can govern. Here is showing that we can cooperate.

Here is showing that we’re not hate-mongers like some in our conservative media are, and what happened? It all blew up right back, because of one phrase: “[A]lthough I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues…” That little aside was blown up on social media as precisely an example of the Republican Party attacking women’s health issues, and less than two hours later, the Bush campaign released a statement clarifying Jeb’s comments.

This is what that statement said. “With regards to womenÂ’s health funding broadly, I misspoke, as there are countless community health centers, rural clinics and other womenÂ’s health organizations that need to be fully funded. They provide critical services to all, but particularly low-income women who donÂ’t have the access they need. I was referring to the hard-to-fathom $500 million in federal funding that goes to Planned Parenthood — an organization that was callously participating in the unthinkable practice of selling fetal organs.”

Can we…? It’s baby! Can we just call this what it is? It’s baby organs. It’s not “fetal organs.” It’s not intact anything. It’s selling baby organs. They are aborting babies, sometimes after they are born, and they are dissecting them and they’re selling baby organs, not “fetal tissue.” Now, as the Washington Post writes here, the Bush campaign’s clarification is essentially an acknowledgement of the candidate’s error. But none of that matters. Sure enough, Hillary Clinton was right there to pounce.

Hillary Clinton tweeted, “Jeb Bush, you are absolutely, unequivocally wrong.” This from a woman who’s out there running ads announcing how proudly she stands with Planned Parenthood. And then the Democrat media machine had all it needed to swing into action. We got audio sound bites, some here to show you this. But this is classic. He didn’t say anything wrong, and he gets attacked as conducting a War on Women.

And then tries to correct it, and that didn’t work. When are these people gonna learn you can’t compromise, you can’t cross the aisle, you can’t extend the flying fickle finger of friendship or hand of friendship, whatever? You can’t. There is no bipartisanship. There is no cooperation. There is no showing on the other side we can govern. They’re not interested in that. When, if ever, is the establishment on our side going to figure out the reality?

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RUSH: Here’s Jeb Bush yesterday in Nashville, Southern Baptist Convention, the Send North America Conference, and the commission president, Russell Moore, said to Jeb, “Are you for defunding Planned Parenthood?”

JEB: The next president should defund Planned Parenthood.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

JEB: The argument against this is, “Well, women’s health issues are gonna be… You’re — you’re attacking, it’s a war on women, and you’re attacking women’s health issues.” You could take dollar for dollar — although I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues. But if you took dollar for dollar, there are many extraordinarily fine organizations, community health organizations that exist — federally sponsored community health organizations — to provide quality care for women on a wide variety of health issues.

RUSH: So this is… I mean, I’m… (sigh) Look, this is so hard. This is so much harder than it used to be. But I have to tell you: Here we have many feel that Jeb Bush is the front-runner. I can’t tell you the number of people that think Jeb’s automatically the nominee. It’s done, simply because of money. He’s got more money than anybody else. That’s how the determination is made, forecaster prognostication. I can’t tell you the number of people. And I tell you: All the Democrats think it. Every Democrat analyst on TV, they all think it. And here we have, here’s our “presumptive nominee” here, just to use their terminology, at the Southern Baptist Convention, seeking credit for citing all of the federal programs for women’s health.

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RUSH: My point about Jeb Bush and how hard this is: I mean, here we have a man that a lot of the smart people, for what it’s worth… I’m just telling you what they think. I’m not telling you I agree with it, okay?

This is just what I’m hearing. The presumption is that Jeb is the nominee and all of this that’s gonna happen between now and then is just a show, and the reason he’s the nominee is he’s got the money. He’s gonna end up with more money, and who has the money wins, can spend the money to wipe everybody else out. And that’s the theory. Plus, as part of the fact that Jeb is gonna have all the money, he’s the establishment guy.

And all of the people that live inside the Beltway, both parties, think the establishment gets what it wants. And they do. So that’s why the thinking. So when I refer to Jeb as the presumptive nominee here, it’s just echoing these sentiments, not that I also think it. But here’s a guy, he’s speaking to the Southern Baptist Convention, and he feels it necessary to praise the federal government and all of the different fully funded federal women’s health programs there are.

I’m just telling you, it strikes me, because this is such at variance with what not long ago the Republican Party instinctively opposed. It wasn’t that long ago that the Republican Party instinctively was oriented toward, if not reducing the size of government, at least stopping the growth, reining it in. At least saying so. Maybe they never really meant it, but at least they said it. That’s even out the window now. Now in order to gain favor, even at the Southern Baptist Convention, you gotta praise federal programs.

And even doing that, he stepped in it, with that one little aside, “Although I don’t know if we need half billion dollars for women’s health programs,” and then Twitter blew up, the media took the lead, and it blew up afterwards. And Hillary comes out with her response. Last night in Denver during campaign event, Hillary Clinton said…

HILLARY: Jeb said he’s not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues. I’m reading it because I want to quote it exactly. Now, he’s got no problem giving billions of dollars away to super wealthy and powerful corporations, but I guess women’s health just isn’t a priority for him.

RUSH: And then here came the apology and the clarification, “No, no, no! I was talking about Planned Parenthood,” and then he went through a litany of praise for all the other federal programs. The idea that there is a shortage or would be a shortage of women’s health care? We’ve got Medicaid. We’ve got Medicare. We’ve got Obamacare. We’ve got… We are drowning. We’re going broke, folks, in the amounts of money we are spending on health care for people.

The nation is literally going broke paying some sort of welfare for a growing number of people. We cannot afford it! It’s gonna come due someday. And so the media, they’re all excited ’cause Hillary’s been rescued. Hillary was plummeting! Bernie Sanders was creeping up on her. Hillary was making gaffe after gaffe after gaffe. We’ve got sound bites, by the way, coming up, of Hillary in South Carolina being interviewed and she’s trying to put on this Southern accent by dropping the G’s.

(impression) “Y’know, talkin’ to people like this and tryin’ to make ’em think she’s a Southern ol’ gal and so forth and talkin’ ’bout when Chelsea was born’d. ‘Yeah, I’m holdin’ Chelsea in my lap and she’juss so messy! Chelsea juss so messy! jusS so loud, and I looked at Chelsea and I said, ‘Chelsea, y’know, you never been a baby befo’, and I never been a mama befo’! We gonna have to do something here.” She’s talking about an infant that won’t stop crying. So here’s an example. Andrea Mitchell (NBC News, Washington) Lester Holt on the Nightly News last night, said, “Andrea, is this a-one-day issue for Jeb,” or did he really, really step in it pretty deeply?

MITCHELL: Hillary Clinton pounced! She’s been so much on the defensive — all the Republicans ganging up on her, her own poll numbers sliding even among women — and now she’s got an issue, and an issue with the largest voting bloc: Women!

RUSH: They’re so excited. They’re so desperate to reignite the War on Women, and they think Jeb Bush just did it. So that’s today’s object lesson. You want to talk about bipartisanship? You want to talk about cooperation? You want to talk about compromise? You want to talk about crossing the aisle? You want to talk about working together to show that things can get done in Washington? You want to show how you can govern?

Well, tell me: How was any of this received by the people we cross the aisle to meet?

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RUSH: This Melissa Chicago. Thank you for calling, you’re up first, and it’s great to have you here. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you. I was just wondering why we even need a Planned Parenthood with Obamacare, because since Obamacare kicked in we haven’t had to pay for any of our lady doctors and lady medicine, so why even need Planned Parenthood at all?

RUSH: Well, we’re not talking about need here. The federal government and its expenditures and growth and size is not based on need at all. It’s based on what voters want and now expect. Planned Parenthood donates, sees to it that a lot of money is donated to the Democrat Party. Planned Parenthood is the Democrat Party. I understand your question, and your question, in what I would call a clean, unfettered universe, is great. Why do we need Planned Parenthood? Everything they do happens elsewhere.

Why do we need to be paying for it? They get, by the way, not half a million dollars. They get two billion dollars. I think it’s incredible the amount of money they get, and they do not do anything women’s health-wise that they can’t get anywhere else. They don’t do mammograms. I made that point yesterday. I went out on a limb a little bit because I wasn’t quite sure, but it turned out I’m right. They don’t do mammograms.

Now, if you’re into women’s health and you don’t do mammograms, you’re not into women’s health. In this day and age if you don’t offer mammograms, you can’t really say that you’re a women’s health organization. It’s too crucial. It’s too important. But there’s so much redundancy. This was Jeb’s point. We got a federal program here, fully funded, federal program over there, fully funded. We got millions of them. Well, tens and 20 of ’em. Then Planned Parenthood.

This is the money laundering cycle. It’s why the unions all support the Democrat Party. Union dues end up, a portion of them, end up in the campaign coffers of Democrat candidates in the Democrat Party. Same thing with money spent at Planned Parenthood. The federal government propping up Planned Parenthood is a way for that money to get to the Democrat Party, a portion of it. It’s how this works. So it’s not about, you know, we need Planned Parenthood. We’re not making budget decisions based on what’s needed. Baseline budgeting is not about what’s needed or what’s been spent or how much is gonna have to be spent. It’s about making sure the budget gets bigger and bigger by a predictable amount every year.

So let’s say you fund Planned Parenthood, take the $2 billion figure. They have Planned Parenthood offices all over the place. The people that work at Planned Parenthood, the people that support Planned Parenthood, then donate to the Democrat Party. Some of that $2 billion is donated, comes back to the Democrat Party. It’s a money-laundering operation. But there’s an ideological component, too. I’m not saying that the Democrats support Planned Parenthood just for the money, but you can’t take the money out of the equation. You have to always follow the money.

Right now we haven’t reached the point yet where, say, Harry Reid or Pelosi or Obama could go over to the Department of Treasury and write a check for, say, $150 billion for nefarious purposes, including the next presidential campaign. So how do they get the money? Well, they go out, they’ll raise it from donors and whatever, but they’ll also do it by funding various organizations who will then send some of that money back to the Democrat Party. So you can’t go to the Treasury and rob it, but you can allocate money to groups that are gonna send a portion of what they get back to you. And that’s how you raid the federal Treasury.

And then beyond that, you build up relationships based on ideological components of liberalism, in which case abortion is the sacrament. So Planned Parenthood is sacred, folks. It’s not even in the equation of why do we need Planned Parenthood because we’ve got everything they do over here and over here and over there, back there, up there, down there, why do we need them? It’s all about maintaining the Democrat Party majority. It’s all about maintaining the phoniness of the War on Women and maintaining a phony theme or meme that Republicans hate women and Democrats love and protect ’em. It’s all part of a massive head-fake operation.

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RUSH: Mark in Houston, you’re next. I’m glad you waited, sir. I appreciate your patience. Hello.

CALLER: Yes. Thank you, Rush. I seem to have noticed a couple things that kind of go hand in hand. One of them is that you know you never hear anybody talk about the Tea Party anymore other than a couple of times you’ve mentioned it. It’s almost as if they refer to us now as the Republican base, which I kind of like that. You know, I think it’s kind of what has happened. They go hand in hand.

But the other thing I heard is when Jeb Bush made a comment before he even announced his presidency was that in order to win the presidency, you have to lose the primary. And that stuck with me. I couldn’t understand what he meant. I’m starting to see what’s happening now. What is a possibility that this guy, Jeb Bush, ends up having to lose the primary of the Republican nomination and turn around and run as an independent himself, which would make the media happy. They would love that entire scenario.

RUSH: Well —

CALLER: Is that a possibility?

RUSH: I must tell you now, that is a scenario not even I have contemplated: Jeb Bush running third party. That’s just… His family might disown him, if he did that. I think Barbara would spank him. Not because he lost the primary, but if he ever goes outside the party and runs as an independent, Barbara Bush is gonna track him down and put him over her knee and spank him. A Bush would not do that to the Republican Party. But let me ‘splain to you what he meant by losing the nomination…

I forget exactly what he said, but his objective is to win the nomination by losing to the base. That, of course, numerically isn’t possible. So what he really meant was he wants to become the nominee and not have everybody think that he’s a Tea Partier. He’s going to win the nomination by getting the votes of those people but he’s not gonna be proud of it. He’s not gonna… The Republican base. It’s an interesting observation you’ve made that we’re not hearing about the Tea Party much.

That won’t last much longer. The Tea Party is gonna be making an appearance. It’s not anything they’re doing. It’s the Drive-Bys that are refusing to reference the Tea Party. Now, there has to be a reason for that, and since you bring this up, I haven’t actually contemplated it. Off the top of my head I can think of a couple scenarios, but they use Tea Party as a pejorative, whenever they do news about the Tea Party.

Look at Brian Ross, the Aurora, Colorado, movie shooting, the first thing Brian Ross did at ABC News was try to link the shooter to the Tea Party. So the Drive-Bys want everybody to think the Tea Party is in common cause with the (impression) “Death to America!” Iranian extremists (laughing) like Obama said today. Jeb wants to win the nomination, but he wants everybody to realize he did it without the base. That’s the thing he’s trying to pull off here. Numerically he can’t.

You can’t win the Republican nomination without your base. It’s too many votes. It’s — and you can’t win the presidency if your base doesn’t show up for you. So he’s he’s he’s got a lot to chew on there, but he won’t go independent. Not gonna happen.

Robert, San Diego, California, next up you are. Great-of-you with us, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you. Let me set my cigar down here, Rush.

RUSH: By the way, I have had a rotten cigar day. I have not had a good one yet. I’ve had tough draw. I’ve had bitter flavor. I’ve had to throw four away today. It’s not a good cigar day. How’s yours?

CALLER: Mine’s good. I’m just over here on Coronado Island and —

RUSH: It ticks me off.

CALLER: — it’s legal to smoke on your own property, so I’m okay as long as I don’t go too far.

RUSH: Not for long. Enjoy it while you can.

CALLER: (chuckles) Thank you. Hey, Rush, I wanted to bring up more on the Jeb Bush situation. I think yesterday, after Hillary spoke, he was at a crossroads. He had the option to do one of two things. Choice one, which he took, was to be fearful that he was gonna lose the moderates (which you correctly define as people who are afraid to admit they’re liberal) or, two, served up to him, he could have doubled down. He could have stated something brash like, “The first thing I’ll do when I’m president is defund defund Planned Parenthood, and I’ll do it by executive action!” He’d been leading in the polls before the debates started tomorrow. He had the opportunity to be a conservative and quickly took the usual way out, not surprisingly. I’m pronouncing his candidacy over.

RUSH: Well, don’t do that. I mean, I get your point. But he’s always gonna be considered the front-runner because of money. If his fundraising ever falls that’s when they’re gonna panic at the Republican establishment side. He’s thought to be the guy that’s gonna raise more money than any other Republican, and that automatically to them means he’s got the nomination. But you have a brilliant point. It’s another way of phrasing it. We talked about this in the first half hour of the program.

So Jeb goes out there and he utters something totally inoffensive and totally true says with all the money we’re spending, “I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues” as he lists all the other health care programs that we’re spending. And he, by the way, is praising them, and they’re all federal programs. He’s praising them. He didn’t get in trouble with his base for praising the federal government’s health programs for women; he got in trouble for one half sentence: “[A]lthough ‘I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.”

All hell broke loose on Twitter, which led to all hell breaking loose on the media. And you’re right, at that point Jeb could have doubled down and defended what he said and taken the opportunity of all this attention to explain it and double down on it and establish a position on it. And instead he walked it back and he did a Kelly Osbourne. “That’s not what I meant. I was talking about Planned Parenthood,” and then he again rattled off all these other federal health programs for women that he supports and loves.

Now, the reason he did it is not a mystery. The Republican establishment, we’re getting the point where that phrase is being overused, so maybe it would suffice to define them. Just think of the consultants, the guys these candidates hire to run their campaigns and to advise them on what to say, where to say it, when to say it, and how to say it. There is a universal belief throughout the Republican hierarchy, and it is we cannot be critical of anything happening today.

We must acknowledge that people have expressed a desire for these things. We must pledge that we understand that; that we can do it better; that we can do it smarter; that we’re not going to take anything away. And we don’t have a problem with President Obama; we don’t have a problem with women; we don’t have a problem with black people. So any time there is the slightest hint that a comment a Republican makes could be taken as confrontational, argumentative, they’re gonna walk it back. It’s pure defense. It is the prevent defense. It’s make sure we don’t offend anybody.

It’s this notion, “We can govern. We must show we can cooperate. We must show we are even tempered. We must show that we can cross the aisle and work with our opponents and acknowledge that when they have good ideas, we will incorporate them.” All of that is what was the guiding thought process behind Jeb deciding to walk back what he said and clarifying. But as is always the case, the reaction was not, “Ah, what a good guy. Oh, man, you see, Jeb’s the kind of guy we can –” That was not the reaction.

Andrea Mitchell went out there and started praising Hillary for making sure Jeb didn’t get away with it, making sure Jeb got told what-for. They were all happy that Hillary humiliated and embarrassed Jeb and made him walk it back. ‘Cause they don’t want to cooperate. They don’t want to get along with us. They don’t like us. I don’t know who came up with this, but it is what’s guiding the Republican Party these days. I mean, even Chris Christie two weeks ago (imitating Christie), “If Democrats have a good idea, I’m gonna tell ’em I like their idea. I’m gonna walk across the aisle with ’em and met ’em halfway. I’m gonna show ’em we can get along.” It’s in their blood, now, folks, that’s what they’re gonna do.