RUSH: David Axelrod was on CNN, Piers Morgan Tonight last night, and Piers Morgan said, “There’s very large wins there for Romney on every –” This is the internals of the polls after the debate. This is really curious. Overall, people said, “I think Obama won it by three or four points.” You go to the internals on issue after issue after issue, Obama wasn’t even close. Romney skunked Obama on every issue. Everything internal. And that’s what Piers Morgan is asking Axelrod about.

AXELROD: No, it doesn’t really worry me, Piers, because I saw a whole bunch of data off of that debate, including other polls and focus groups and dial groups. And most of those were undecided voters, independent voters, people who were still making up their minds in this election. When you take a large sample of voters that skew Republican, as your poll did, and many of whom have made up their minds already, you’re going to get the kind of results you got.

RUSH: So then Piers Morgan says, “Binders for women. I find it rather facile and silly, to be honest with you.” Here’s the whole exchange.

MORGAN: Binders for women. I find it rather facile and silly, to be honest with you, that the Democrats are trying to make fun of Mitt Romney for what seemed to be a perfectly reasonable thing to say, in the same way the Big Bird thing looked a bit silly and facile. Do you guys think that perhaps you should be focusing on more serious stuff than this?

AXELROD: The point the governor was making was that he couldn’t find qualified women and so he reached out. It turns out that an organization gave him the particular binder with resumes of women. But I am not surprised that he needed the help because if you look at the business that he ran before he was governor, they had no women at a senior level. They had no women partners.

RUSH: Right. And the women in your administration fly the coop. Anyway, I got a fascinating little note here from my buddy Mark Levin. Now, Levin, in addition to being an achieved, accomplished author, was chief of staff to Ed Meese, who was attorney general for Ronaldus Magnus. But I didn’t know this. He says, “I was an associate director of presidential personnel for a little over a year in the Reagan administration. We would gather resumes of individuals interested in non-career positions throughout the administration. And we would computerize the information, we would make the names available throughout the government. We’d tell everybody throughout the government that we had people interested in work. We solicited resumes from prominent individuals who we wanted to recruit for positions in the administration, and we would process those as well.

“Now, most often, when President Reagan wanted to fill a senior administration position, including cabinet and subcabinet positions or top agency posts, even judicial positions, we put together a binder filled with qualified candidates, as well as recommendations, from which the president would select a candidate.”

So here’s Levin who worked in the personnel office, associate director, Reagan administration, lo and behold, they put together binders of qualified people who either had applied or who they were making other agencies in the government aware that these people were qualified.

So his note to me says, “I have a question. How exactly did and does Obama decide who to appoint to over 3,000 non-career positions in his administration, including his senior positions? How does his office of personnel recruit candidates? How does his office of personnel process and collate resumes and present options to him for selecting candidates for top posts? And if they don’t use binders of qualified candidates, exactly how does Obama make his decisions?”

Now, I think this is a fascinating question. I hadn’t thought of this. But here’s a guy who worked in the presidential personnel office, he was associate director, and they let Reagan know who was qualified, and they let other departments of the government know because they put together binders of resumes. And so it’s a logical question, “Hey, Obama, how do you find out who to appoint? How do your people tell you who’s qualified?” Because there are 3,000 non-career — these are the political appointments, in every administration. How, for example, was Van Jones’ name made available to Obama? Well, maybe Obama knew Van Jones because they’re fellow travelers. But Obama doesn’t know everybody intimately.

Take these ambassadors. Now, ambassadors, in some cases, come from big donors, but not all. So how is Obama informed that these people are qualified? What method of media do they use? Do they bring him an iPad and say, “Here you go, Mr. President, on your iPad here’s a list of qualified candidates”? Or do they say, “Mr. President, we’re gonna put it on your BlackBerry.” Or does somebody walk into the Oval Office with a binder? What do you bet Obama’s like everybody else and uses binders? Now, when this comes out, and it will, when this question gets raised, what they’ll do is they’ll go back and focus on what Axelrod said, and that is, Romney didn’t even know any.

That’s what he told Piers Morgan, who was right. He was right. This is facile. It’s silly. You’re making fun of Romney for what seemed to be a perfectly reasonable thing to say and to do, and the Big Bird thing, too? (imitating Axelrod) “Well, actually, our focus groups and our call groups and our phone groups and our polls and everybody we talked to and what’s interesting is that Romney, he didn’t even know anybody, he needed help finding qualified women.” Right, okay, so Obama knows everybody? Everybody in the binder Obama gets, he knows them personally? Obama knows all? He knows everybody. It’s a great point Levin makes, because every one of these people, everybody uses binders. Or the digital equivalent. Even if it is brought to him on an iPad, which I doubt, but you know that there’s binders all over this regime and this administration. So it’s an excellent point. But the bottom line is this remains a huge insult, I think, to the women of this country. Huge insult.

I want to go back to something else, too. We had the 18-year-old student from Gainesville, Florida. She had observed in the Frank Luntz focus group after the debate on Tuesday night there was a woman who said that — and all the people in the Luntz group were undecided — for her the decision was not vote or Romney. That was the nature of her indecision. It kind of surprised me ’cause I can’t fathom people not voting, but I know there are people, now that it’s brought to my attention. But somebody sitting home and not voting is essentially a vote for Obama.

And then I got a note, an e-mail from somebody who said, “You’d be surprised, Rush, at the number of people in this country who got suckered by Obama and don’t want to admit it to anybody, and they probably won’t vote. It’s more people than you might believe.” I do not doubt one half of that. I don’t doubt it. The Luntz focus group demoed it. I don’t doubt that there are millions of Americans who drank the Kool-Aid.

Their desire was so great that we end all of this bickering, end the war in Iraq, go back to everybody getting along and the rest of the world loving us. They were buying into all that tripe. There no doubt were a lot of people who wanted all that to happen. And they were bombarded with Obama being The Guy, The Messiah! Obama was presented as a blank canvas. You could make him be whatever you wanted him to be.

He was a magical candidate in that regard!

Well, a lot of those people — the Luntz focus group proved it — are mad. They feel betrayed, and they’re mad. This focus group that Luntz had was made up a lot of people who were angry, and they’re angry at Obama, and they’re angry at themselves for falling for it. Some segment of that universe, it is theorized, just won’t vote ’cause they’re so embarrassed, fed up, or what have you.

If any of you fit that description, I just want to caution you that not voting is the same as voting for Obama. You’re making the same mistake you make the first time. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah! I don’t want to call it a mistake. I’m not trying to make you feel worse than you do. But I’m just saying: If you don’t vote, you’re not accomplishing anything. You’re perpetuating status quo.

The reason is, if you look at what’s happening, Obama is simply trying to shore up his base now. This binder business and Big Bird and the feistiness in the debate and all this aggression from Biden (and to certain degree Obama), this is all about the base. In fact, I remember the day after the Biden debate. I came in here and everybody was railing about how badly Biden had done and how offensive he was to people.

I said, “He rallied that base. He rallied the depressed base.”

I have no doubt the Obama base is depressed. Everything they believed in has bombed out, and their guy has bombed out. He isn’t who they thought he was. What they have now unifying them is their hatred of us. That’s all they’ve got. They’re not unified around Obama’s greatness. They’re not unified around Obama doing magic anymore ’cause that doesn’t happen. That doesn’t exist; it never was real.

The one thing that they got that they can hold onto is their hatred for us, and Biden gave ’em that, and Obama gave them that. That’s all they’ve got now is rallying that base, and that’s why the negative ads continue. That’s why all this others stuff with the behavior at the debates. Meanwhile, what is Romney doing? Romney is reaching out beyond his base now. Romney’s gaining in women. That’s the dirty little secret.

While all this is going on, Romney’s actually gaining in women nationally and in key battleground states. Romney is now reaching out for that group of people who bought into the Obama myth and realize now that that’s all it was. Romney’s making a beeline for them, and his effort is to get them to vote, as opposed to staying home. For Obama, the reach-out’s gone. There’s no hope. Obama started writing off segments of the electorate last year.

White, working-class voters are the biggest one that he’s written off. But now, when you’re in New Hampshire the day after the debate, in Iowa and so forth, you’re simply trying to secure your base. You’ve got a whole different firewall now you’ve erected. He’s probably gonna lose Virginia, Florida, and North Carolina. Those are huge. In Florida, Palm Beach and Broward County, I gave you numbers.

In 2008, Obama won over McCain 63-35 for the most part in both places. Now he’s only up four in both places and obviously trending in the wrong direction. Now Colorado’s in play? That wasn’t supposed to happen. He’s one point behind in Wisconsin after Romney’s picked up eight or nine points there. Seven points up in the Gallup daily tracking poll, is Romney! And what are they answering with?

Binders and Big Bird and trying to cover up the lies told about Benghazi and the death of the ambassador. They’re in a world of hurt right now, and this binder business? That’s another one that could blow up in their face. Because who doesn’t use them through business, through academe, and in other administrations? So what they’re gonna have to do is, “Well, it’s quite telling that Romney didn’t even know any qualified women!”

So you ladies, prepare yourselves, ’cause your intelligence is going to be perpetually insulted for the rest of the campaign. All you want is an abortion after the birth control pills are denied you. See, that’s it. The Republicans will not let you have birth control pills and then you’re gonna get pregnant and then they don’t want to you to have the abortion.

That’s all you are to the Democrat Party. You’re just out there having sex like minks, having abortions like minks and that’s what they want you to do and the Republicans don’t. So if you want to keep having sex like minks and having abortions like minks, you gotta vote Obama, and that — they think — is a brilliant appeal to you. It is the heighth of an insult.