RUSH: I am your host, El Rushbo, America’s Real Anchorman, and, unlike Tom Brokaw, I don’t care if a campaign wants to use any of me in their spots. You heard about this with Brokaw — you haven’t heard about — oh. Here’s the phone number. 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.

On Saturday, the Romney campaign released a new ad featuring a clip from 1997, Tom Brokaw on the NBC Nightly News, which opened with Brokaw crowing that Newt Gingrich’s congressional peers had found him guilty of ethics violations. You saw the commercial? Okay, so you do know what I’m talking about. NBC and Brokaw are now demanding that Romney take the ad down because Brokaw does not want to have his objectivity as a journalist tarnished.

So I guess what Brokaw is saying, “Look, I’ll destroy Gingrich on my own, Mitt. Don’t use me. You’re compromising my journalistic integrity by putting me in your campaign. I can take care of Gingrich myself and I did back in 1997. I don’t need you doing it.”

The really funny thing is that NBC and Brokaw don’t seem to mind that in the clip he was wrong. He was factually wrong about Gingrich. Gingrich was only found guilty of one ethics violation out of 84 that the Democrats brought. It was a technicality if there ever was a technicality, but apparently Brokaw and NBC aren’t embarrassed that their reporting was misleading. They’re just upset that Romney’s using it. Maybe Brokaw wants a stipend. Who knows. Anyway, according to reports this morning the Romney camp’s gonna meet with NBC people sometime today to discuss the Brokaw footage.

All right, here’s the telephone number if you want to be on the program. We will get to your phone calls today. 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

I’m gonna speak just for me. I am getting tired of the whining about negative campaigning. I’m getting tired of the whining from everybody about it. Not just the candidates, I’m getting tired hearing about it from everyone. What in the world is politics? What is it, if not this? I’m gonna say something to the Gingrich people here. Newt is really caught up in this notion that Romney is saying things about him that aren’t true. I’m telling you, I’m having a tough time relating to being upset about that. As someone who is routinely lied about every day and has been for 25 years, it comes with the territory.

Now, I know that one of the problems that Newt has is he doesn’t think he can combat it. Romney is outspending Gingrich in Florida $15 million to $3 million. Gingrich has been outspent by $12 million in Florida alone. So I’m sure Newt feels that he’s unable to combat it and repel it. Unlike me, he doesn’t have a microphone every day, and I do. But I don’t use it to deal with the critics. I ignore ’em. Newt and that Juan Williams episode, what was it about that that had people standing up and cheering? It was conservatism. I’ve long maintained that whoever can articulate conservatism the most consistently, the most confidently and the happiest is going to win this thing. And that pretty much could overcome any of the negatives.

My advice is not listened to and I don’t expect it to be. I’m not in that business. And Newt said that he was off his game in the last debate last Thursday ’cause Romney was telling such outrageous lies about him that he was shell-shocked. Now, I don’t know if that is a ploy for sympathy or what, but what in the world do either of these two guys think is gonna happen when either one of them ends up facing Obama? I don’t care who’s telling lies in the Republican campaign, they are pikers compared to what’s gonna happen when the Democrat campaign begins. And something else that I’m pretty confident in saying. As hard-hitting and go-for-the-throat and take-no-prisoners as Romney’s going after Newt, he will not do this going after Obama. A lot of people out there are praising Romney, “Hey, this is politics. Hey, frankly, it’s what a campaign’s supposed to do. A campaign’s supposed to be able to mount a full-fledged assault.”

Romney, a lot of people are giving him credit for that document dump last Wednesday and Thursday all over the media that took Gingrich out. That’s what campaigns are supposed to do. Yeah, it’s the way it’s played, but I’m gonna tell you, it ain’t gonna be played that way against Obama. If you are deciding that you like Romney’s toughness the way he’s taken out Newt, I got something for you. He isn’t gonna do that against Obama. Do you think the Republican Party’s got the guts to do that against Obama? (interruption) You think so? You think so? It’s interesting you think so. Have you seen any evidence? No, you haven’t. Have you seen any evidence of any Republican going after Obama the way Republicans are going after each other? You haven’t. In fact, when Romney’s had the chance, (imitating Romney) “Oh, gosh, you know, I just think he’s in over his head.” Has he said something as innocuous as that about Newt?

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RUSH: So people say, “Well, Rush, what do you want?” I want the campaign to go on. I want the thing to go on and on and on and on. I hope it goes on ’til June. (interruption)

Well, Newt’s promising to stay in until the convention. If Romney wins in Florida tomorrow, it’s the… What’s the word I’m seeing on TV? The… I can’t remember. They’re assuming it’s over. The “Rominee” as in “nominee.” He’d be the “Rominee.” That’s the word that is going around out there. Now, on this dirty campaigning stuff. Negative campaigning. Do you know who…? In American history, do you know who the architects of negative campaigning are? Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. These guys, from the days of the Founding, were best buds. They were very close buds back in 1776. But in 1800, party politics entered their lives, and they drifted so far apart.

They hated each other. Oh, God, they accused each other of treason. Wait ’til you hear what was said about them and what these guys were saying about each other back in 1800. Only on their deathbeds when they both died within seconds of each other, according to legend — only on their deathbeds — did they put it all back together. Well, prior to that Adams had sent Jefferson a letter. “Jefferson’s camp accused President Adams of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character…” He accused him of being a hermaphrodite, which of course means that you have neither the aspects of a man or a woman. You’re like a moderate. “You hermaphrodite!” It’s like calling somebody a moderate with no sex organs to boot. You know, no nothing.

Now, in firing back, John “Adams’ men called Vice President Jefferson ‘a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.'” That’s right! Adams accused Jefferson of being racially impure in 1800. “As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was ‘one of the most detestable of mankind.’ … Back then, presidential candidates didn’t actively campaign. In fact, Adams and Jefferson spent much of the election season at their respective homes…”

It was their campaigns that did all this. The candidates had this silly notion that they were above it. Jefferson called Adams a wimp, essentially. “But the key difference between the two politicians was that Jefferson hired a hatchet man named James Callender to do his smearing for him.” Now, James Callender was written in a semi-fictional way in a great novel by William Safire. And this novel by William Safire has — and, as I say, some of the story was fictitious, but it was a fact-based fictitious outcome. I mean, Callender in the book is rumored to be having an affair with someone. He never did that. He was an ugly, stinky, sweaty guy in reality. The book portrayed him as a modern… Well, he was still stinky and sweaty, but he was a ladies man. Safire just put that in there to juice up the story in a James Bond kind of way.

But this Callender was a pamphleteer. He smeared, he lied, he wrote and published some of the most despicable stuff out there against candidates. He did it for Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson hired this low-life. Adams “considered himself above such tactics. To Jefferson’s credit, Callender proved incredibly effective, convincing many Americans that Adams desperately wanted to attack France. Although the claim was completely untrue, voters bought it, and Jefferson stole the election.” Now, Thomas Jefferson has this image of above repute, the greatest reputation. They all did it. This is politics. It is what happens. People lie about you. It’s called the First Amendment. Whoever raises the most money has an advantage. It’s called politics. Whoever can organize the stuff the best, it’s called politics, and whining about it ain’t politics. It’s an honorable American tradition. Scandalmonger was the name of the novel. You know what, folks? If you’re interested in this, go somewhere (Amazon, wherever) and see if you can get the e-book version of it if you use iPad or Kindle or whatever. Get Scandalmonger by William Safire. It’s really a page-turner.

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RUSH: You know, one of the reasons that the Democrats and the regime are so hell-bent to do away with Citizens United, that Supreme Court case, is that they don’t like super PACs. It was that Supreme Court decision, the Citizens United case, that permits these super PACs that you may not-a heard of before this campaign. Super PACs will allow the GOP nominee, whoever he is, to attack Obama directly while they stay above the fray. It’ll be a return to the way it was with Jefferson and Adams. They didn’t actively campaign, it won’t be a direct return, but their surrogates did. The super PAC is a surrogate, allows the candidate to say, “I can’t control what they’re doing.”

So the super PAC can go out there, run all kinds of crap, all kinds of negative stuff on anybody, including Obama if they want to. And it will allow the nominee, the candidate, to say legally, “I can’t control what they do.” For lack of a better explanation, separation of powers involved here. Super PACs are on their own. I can’t coordinate with them. So it will depend on whoever our nominee’s super PAC is and what they do. But I can tell you that Romney’s not gonna go after him. I know that.

Now, back to these early days of America campaigning. How many you of you know the story of Thomas Jefferson having an affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings? You probably think Jesse Jackson discovered that and told everybody about it and that’s how we know, right? Well, it was this guy Callender, James Callender who dug that up about Jefferson to put it out. He turned on Jefferson. I mean this was dirty stuff. There were smears galore. Jefferson turned on George Washington. George Washington said, (paraphrasing) “Thomas Jefferson is like my son.” When it came to campaign against Washington, Jefferson said, (imitating Jefferson) “I don’t care about that. You’re a dirty old man, worn out, time for you to split and leave this country to the young people.” It was vicious stuff. It always has been.

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RUSH: Newt was on This Week on Sunday — yesterday. They had the fill-in host Jake Tapper. Tapper said, “As we pointed out last night, you held that rally –” this is at the West Palm Beach County Lincoln Day Dinner “– you got the endorsement of Herman Cain, but around the same time a poll was coming out indicating that even though at one point in Florida you were neck and neck with Romney, he seems to have opened up his lead. Why do you think your poll numbers in Florida have collapsed, Newt?”

NEWT: This is gonna go on all the way to the convention. I think clearly the conservatives and the grassroots are increasingly angry about the way in which the Washington establishment has rallied, in many ways with complete dishonesty, as Rush Limbaugh pointed out the other day. Some of the articles, some of the attacks on me have been breathtakingly dishonest, and I think as that deepens, the conservatives are gonna come together and decide they do not want a Massachusetts liberal to be the Republican nominee.

RUSH: Saturday night Fox News Channel’s Justice with Judge Jeanine, this is Jeanine Pirro, she interviewed Mike Huckabee, the host of Huckabee, which it figures that Mike Huckabee would be the host of a show named Huckabee, and he is. And she said to him, “Now, we talked about those Mitt Romney attack ads in 2008, Governor, Rush Limbaugh’s talked about them. He said Mitt Romney dumped those attack ads on you in 2008. You hated him in 2008, and now you’ve endorsed him.”

HUCKABEE: Of course I did. You know, when you’re the object of somebody’s attack ads and they’re distorting your record and making you appear to be something that you know you’re not and your supporters know, it’s not pleasant. That was four years ago, he was my opponent. I’m not running against Mitt Romney right now. He’s not running against me. It’s hard to like somebody when you’re running against them.

RUSH: Do you need me to close the loop for you on this? You do? (imitating Huckabee) “Well, 2008, yeah, I hated Romney. Yeah, he’s lying about me, but that was then, this is now. He’s not running against me now. He’s not lying about me so I don’t hate him now. We don’t carry grudges. Mitt’s the best guy. I hate Newt.” Well, he didn’t say he hates Newt, didn’t say that. But that was then, this is now, and this is the Republican establishment hanging tight, holding together, the elected office Republican establishment.