RUSH: There was a story — I intended to already be into my media Stack here ’cause it’s great, but something just struck me. I didn’t go into detail on it yesterday. I intended to, I just didn’t get to it. There’s another thing I didn’t get to yesterday. There’s a bunch of polling data out, and I saved it for today, that American people and African-Americans think race relations are worse today than since Obama was elected, and even an Obama pollster is admitting this, and I’ve got the sound bites.

But there was another story yesterday that I touched on, spent a modicum of time on, but I didn’t delve into it. That is that Larry Sabato, who is the political scientist extraordinaire at the University of Virginia, alarmed many on the Republican side by saying (paraphrasing), “What wave? I don’t see any evidence of a Republican wave election victory.” Everybody’s been talking about it under the assumption that things are so bad, that people are so fed up that they’re gonna automatically vote for Republicans. That they’ll keep the House. That they’ll pick up enough seats in the Senate to control it and maybe even blow it out.

And then Sabato came along yesterday and said, “What wave? I don’t see any wave.” And then that caused Jim Geraghty at The Campaign Spot at National Review Online — it’s a blog post — Geraghty said, “Where’s the polling data on these Senate races?” There isn’t any polling data out there on these Senate races. No wonder nobody’s talking about the wave. The media’s not doing any polling data on all of these Democrat seats in the Senate that are vulnerable. There’s no polling data. That’s why there’s no report of a wave; the media has stopped polling it.

Why would they stop polling? Because they don’t want to report the results. Why wouldn’t they care about that? Why wouldn’t they want to report the results? Because the results apparently would not advance the Democrat agenda. You see, polling is not anything related to news. Polling is the creation of news. Polling is all part of advancing the Democrat Party agenda. Polling is designed to either uplift the psychology of the public or to depress the psychology of the public, and in our case, most polling, there are exceptions, but most reports of poll results are designed to depress you.

They are designed to spirit dispirit you. They release a poll that shows you the exact opposite of what you think is going on in the country. For example, Pew did it the other day. Pew released a poll which said that most Americans don’t have the slightest problem at all with Obama playing golf so much. Doesn’t bother most Americans at all. It’s not even on their radar screen.

Now, you’re supposed to see that, and you’re supposed to get depressed. And the way you’re supposed to get depressed is you’re supposed to say, “My God, what a dumb bunch of people in this country. They don’t even care. Oh, my God, the president’s checked out. He’s out playing golf and they don’t care?” And you’re supposed to get depressed and think it’s over and that you have no choice of your side prevailing or winning.

Or by the same token, if they’ve got some polling, if they did the poll on any of these Senate races where Democrats are vulnerable and if the polling data showed that the Democrat incumbents in heap big doo-doo, they don’t want to report that poll because they don’t want to depress the Democrat turnout. They don’t want to psychologically attack the Democrat base, and, by the same token, they don’t want to uplift you.

So they’re just not doing any polling. And that’s why Sabato says, “I don’t see any evidence of a wave.” Now, he wasn’t talking about the fact there wasn’t any polling; that was Jim Geraghty. But let me ask you a question about this. I have been really — and I know you have, too — profoundly frustrated and puzzled by the utter absence of any push-back by the Republican Party. There’s none. We’ve talked about it, and I know you are the same. I have been entirely, totally perplexed that the Republican Party has yet to take advantage of the best opportunity they’ve ever had to contrast who they are with what the Democrat Party is and has become.

Back in the early nineties, when I would do this show, I would talk about the Democrats and liberalism, and I would say to you in the audience, “If we don’t stop it, then X is gonna happen.” It was always a theoretical warning. It was always sounding the alarm. “Hey, folks, let me tell you something. If this doesn’t stop, let me tell you where we’re gonna end up.” Well, we’ve ended up there. We’re no longer talking theory. We don’t have to rely on predictions of what’s gonna happen. We’re living it. And yet the Republicans remain silent. The Republicans do not offer one ounce of push-back, and in many cases, such as immigration, amnesty, they attempt to glom on and seek the same position the Democrats have.

So in the absence of any polling data and in the, therefore, absence of any prediction all of wave election, can you recall seeing — and maybe I’m wrong, ’cause I don’t live in every city, and I don’t watch TV commercials in every city, and I don’t watch local TV anyway. So I need to ask you, have you seen any commercials run by any Republican candidates or the Republican National Committee that spell out what the Republican agenda is?

Have you gotten the impression, have you, by virtue of paying attention to the news and watching television, reading the newspaper, whatever, have you seen any Republican messaging? Have you seen the chairman of the RNC or anybody, potential presidential candidate, I don’t care, anybody define what the Republican Party stands for at this moment? Have you heard anybody say, “We have got to stop the spending”? Have you heard any Republicans say, “We’ve got to reduce the deficit,” the national debt.

Have you heard any Republicans say, “We have got to continue to repeal Obamacare”? Have you heard any Republicans say, “We have got to secure the border and we have got to stop this wanton invasion of illegal alien children”? Have you heard any Republican stand up and say anything in opposition to what’s going on now? Have you? I haven’t. It’s, to me, striking. And yet the Republicans, people talk about a wave election, how is that going to happen? Are they sitting there really believing that the only or the best thing to do is to shut up and don’t become targets and let the Democrats commit harakiri and, come November, people will vote Republican automatically ’cause they’re so fed up with the Democrats? Is that what the thinking is?

Is it they are so afraid of presenting any alternative agenda, because they’re gonna be attacked as racist or criticizing Obama, which means racist, are they so PTSD’d that they are even wary of presenting an alternative, offering a contrast of spelling out their own agenda and what they stand for and what it will mean for the country if Republicans win the Senate? Have you seen anything that says how it’s gonna change? Have you?

Now, you may talk to people you know in an individual congressman’s office and they may tell you, but have you seen any national messaging? Well, I haven’t, either, but I just I needed to ask. As I say, I don’t live everywhere, and I don’t watch local TV everywhere, so I don’t know what people are seeing. But I can tell you my sense is — I mean, I do omnivorous and voluminous reading, and I don’t see anything that is in any way representative of a Republican agenda. I don’t see anything out there that voters can see and consume that does explain to them what will change if the Republicans win, how it’s gonna get better, how all of this that most everybody disagrees with is going to be brought to a halt.

What’s gonna change? How is it gonna be better? What are we gonna do? I don’t see any of that. So the discussion that Larry Sabato brought up of a wave election and how he doesn’t see any evidence of it, you may not even need polling data to explain why there is no talk of a wave election. Granted, you would need it, but you also don’t see — I don’t — any Republican agenda that tells voters why they should vote for Republicans, how it’s gonna get better and improve. I don’t see it.

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RUSH: All right, now. In the midterms in 2010, there also was not a coordinated Republican message or agenda. The Republicans were still in shellshock in 2010, and the midterm sweep in 2010, the Tea Party, I think that shocked everybody. They retook the House. I think it just bowled everybody away. What was interesting about it was it was a total anti-Democrat and anti-Obama vote, ’cause the Republicans, they didn’t have an agenda.

They didn’t have a candidate that could cause people to rally around the party or him or her. It just happened. And maybe they’re relying on the same thing. Maybe they’re relying on just an attitude, the attitude of, “If you think you’re gonna win, you’re gonna win.” It’s a midterm election. It’s far different turnout than a presidential race. But then, on the other side of that, there’s 1994 and the Contract with America.

After the first two years of the Clinton administration there was a full-fledged agenda that was put forth nationwide. All those House races essentially became national, rather than local district races, and in every House Republican district, the candidate talked about what he was gonna do on these national issues. They swept. They took the House back for the first time in 40 years.

But I do. I just think that there’s a little bit… It’s not a little bit. There’s still a lot of fear about saying anything against Obama no matter what. They still think people are gonna rip ’em for it and blame them for it. So maybe they’re just doing the Hillary thing. You know, the more she talks, the more people dislike her. The more silent she is, the better her numbers are. Maybe the GOP thinks it’s the same way.

But isn’t it ironic? The GOP, despite everything, is still depending on the Tea Party for a huge wave victory in November.

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RUSH: Chris in Jacksonville, Florida. Welcome to the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Good morning, Rush. Longtime listener, first-time caller. I’ll try to be succinct. I wanted to call and say that I concurred with your opening assessment because due to my assessment, the establishment Republicans’ desire is for power over improving things. They’re taking conservative voters for granted because they know that voters know that they’re the only choice between them and sane Democrats. They aren’t trying to inspire and motivate. Romney’s advisors had him play it safe, and Boehner went on a national program, Leno, and said nothing (unintelligible) conservative ideas. So they’ve got a history of doing this type of thing, which is exactly what you said.

RUSH: Well, that’s the thing. They don’t have a history. I mean, recent, yeah. But in the not-too-distant past, the Republicans were unafraid to present an alternative agenda and they had some people who could do it well. It is really… You might trace it to the Bush years, George W. Bush and that administration choosing not to respond to any of the criticism. But they still announced their agenda.

They still were pretty public about what they intended to do. Look, there’s a piece by Chris Cillizza today in the Washington Post (I think it’s today) and he addresses this, and he talks about the positive implications of thinking you’re going to win, specifically in midterms. If the attitude is that positive, if you think you’re going to win, it has some sort of an impact on voters and sometimes it’s enough to carry it.

And there’s also basically a Pew poll. It’s not really a poll. Yeah, I guess you’d have to call it a poll. It’s a survey. The upshot of it is that the electorate seems to be in the identical frame of mind that they were in 2010, maybe even more so anti-Democrat than they were in 2010. So it could well be… I’m not defending ’em. I’m explaining. It could well be they see this, and they just made a calculated decision: Speaking would upset the applecart and shut up.